Few guitarists have shaped progressive and avant-garde music as profoundly as Robert Fripp. With King Crimson, Brian Eno, David Bowie and others, Fripp perpetually reinvented the six-stringed wheel with ease.

He usually did so with a Gibson – or something that looked like a Gibson – in hand. This is why if the building were burning down, Fripp would grab his beloved ’59 Les Paul Custom.

“It’s the one that’s worth the most,” he says with a laugh. “That’s for sure!”

“I’m not a collector,” he adds. “[The guitar you buy] should be the one that’s right for the music you’re playing. So I guess the criteria is, ‘Why might you choose this guitar?’ And all my good instruments have been Gibsons or facsimiles. It’s the right fit. I put it up to my body, and it’s the right fit for my left hand and my right hand.”

With all that in mind, we asked Fripp to select and discuss the three guitars that have “fit” him the best over the past six or so decades.

1962 Gibson ES-345

I bought it in the middle of 1963 when I was 17. Up until then, my first guitar was an appalling instrument called an Egmond Frères that my mother bought me for Christmas in 1957. I still have it. It was appalling. My second guitar was a Rosetti, and that was appalling. My third guitar was a Höfner – a President, I think – which was really a semi-pro instrument.

In England at the time, it was very difficult to get American instruments, and you needed a lot of money. But come the middle of 1963, I needed to move on to a proper instrument and bought a 1962 model. The ES-345 was made the year before, I believe, and I bought it from Eddie Moors Music Shop in Boscombe near Bournemouth.

It was £350. I still have the original case and strap. But I needed to buy it on hire-purchase [lay-away], so I went to my father. Because I was 17, you needed a mature person to sign off on the guarantee for payment. My father refused to sign an authority until I had a £100 deposit. I was earning £5 a week, so £5 a week to get to £100 is a bit of a struggle.

1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom

On to the 1959 Les Paul Custom! I bought it in November 1968, when Giles, Giles and Fripp were just about to become King Crimson. King Crimson were lent £7,000 by a businessman called Angus Hunking. He took an interest in us, and I believe £2,000 came in cash in a briefcase.

So I went shopping in the West End of London with Michael Giles. We went to a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue; in the window was this Les Paul for £400. I’m not sure of the exact equivalent of what that might be in today’s cash, but I think it would probably be five-to-seven-and-a-half thousand. I went online today and I found a pristine model the same as mine, advertised at $139,000! And that was an instrument without provenance.

But I went into the shop with Michael Giles with the cash, and I asked for a cash discount. The shop assistant, a young man I disliked because of his attitude, said, “I could phone up Eric Clapton and he’d come and buy it.” And I thought, “Then why haven’t you phoned him already?” So this young man was lying to me, and I didn’t like him. Anyway, I bought the instrument for £380.

This was my main instrument from then onwards. I used it with Crimson and my other work up until 1980. It’s on all the Crimson albums – In the Court, Poseidon, Lizard, Islands, Larks’ Tongues, Starless and Bible Black and Red, and moving on with David Bowie on Scary Monsters and all the Eno albums.

But in early ’78 in New York I bought a second ’59 Les Paul, which I then left in New York, where I was living at the time. I would use it at the New York sessions. Nevertheless, that first 1959 Les Paul was my staple.

2004 Fernandes custom goldtop

My third instrument is the Fernandes, though there are honorable mentions in between. I began using Fernandes, I think, in 1995, when we were in Japan. Fernandes expressed interest in making instruments for Adrian Belew and me.

They made Adrian a couple of red ones, and he cobbled together the best of each, and I bought it from him, probably about 20 years ago. I still play it from time to time. But around 2004, they made me the first goldtop. My contact there was Ken Suiguira, and that was a superb instrument. They made me a second replica goldtop in 2016 as a spare, which is virtually identical to the original from 2004.

But the original 2004 goldtop became my main instrument with King Crimson from 2014 through 2021, and it’s still my main practicing instrument. I’m no longer a touring musician, but I continue to practice as a way of earthing and centering myself, kind of like guitar yoga. [Laughs]

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

By the summer of 1974, King Crimson had reached critical mass. Albums like In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973), and Starless and Bible Black (early 1974) had seen the venerable British band reach the apex of proto-metal-meets-fusion-meets-prog.

But tensions within Crimson’s ranks were escalating, leading to drummer Bill Bruford, vocalist and bassist John Wetton, and guitarist and mastermind Robert Fripp entering the sessions for the heavier-than-heavy album, late 1974’s Red, on the precipice of spontaneous combustion.

Lineup shifts, specifically the expulsion of violinist David Cross, had left Fripp feeling uneasy. This, along with the increasing sensation of needing to break away, manifested in Red’s ultra-heavy, yet still intellectually complex, atmosphere.

“The music is in the body,” Fripp tells Guitar World. “From there we might say, ‘Well, look, what’s going on here? How is the music speaking to us?’ And then we engage the head and express it formally, analyze it and so on. But the strength of Red is that the power is in the music.”

Songs like the hyper-urgent Red, the catchy yet chaotic One More Red Nightmare, and the sprawlingly beautiful Starless illustrate what Fripp refers to as his entry into the liminal zone.

“It was very, very open,” Fripp says. “But it’s a very difficult and uncomfortable place to be. If someone comes in with a pretty well-written piece of music and says, ‘Let’s play this,’ then it's relatively safe and straightforward. But the problem is, when you know what you’re doing, if you know where you’re going, you might get there, and that’s not an interesting place to be. Where you wish to arrive is where you could never possibly know you might be going. But that is a very difficult tension to hold together.”

Given the tension and mental gymnastics that came with it, along with the tepid response Red garnered, which was followed by Crimson’s collapse, one wonders if Fripp regrets the whole thing outright. But time has been kind to Red.

Many think of it as an unintentional yet intentional proto-metal masterpiece. True, some people hate it, but putting art out into the public is to be subject to criticism and hatred. With that, it’s up to the artist to determine how to filter that and how it affects their art.

“I would’ve stayed as an estate agent in Wimborne, Dorset, if I had known the grief that was coming my way,” Fripp says with a laugh. “I would have stayed in real estate!” Jokes aside, most would probably agree that Fripp did alright for himself as far as music – and Red – goes.

“That’s a very generous estimation,” he says. “But my approach has been, if you read your press, you read all of it. And if you read all my press, there have been – by and large – as many people who hated it as who enjoyed it.”

What prompted King Crimson’s shift into Red’s heavier territory?

We usually suggest or assume the music is determined by the so-called right of the writers or players. Another way of looking at this is that music actually seeks to become what it is by acting on the players. In other words, let’s ask the music what it required of those young players.

One of the difficulties of working with [Crimson lyricist] Peter Sinfield in 1971 was that Peter's idea for the future of King Crimson music was Miles Davis-esque, gentle Mediterranean-influenced improv. Peter had a holiday, I think, on [Spanish island] Formentera, and came back very vibed up about a gentle, Miles-leaning atmosphere.

Whereas at that time, my personal voice was speaking more [Crimson's sprawling and ambitious 1973 songs] Larks – Larks Part One and Larks Part Two. So the beginning of metal in Robert’s voice, if you like, began around 1971. I have this from my own notes. Although if you go back to 21st Century Schizoid Man, that was about as metal as it gets.

In that way, you could say Crimson was as proto-metal as anyone.

I saw a recent video on YouTube on the 10 precursors to heavy metal, and Schizoid Man wasn’t among them. That’s absurd. I mean, Ozzy, Master Osbourne, not only recorded Schizoid Man on a solo album, but he was always generous enough to acknowledge Crimson.

The metallic – the powerful, metallic element – has always been there in Crimson. For me, it became increasingly articulated in the simple question: What would Jimi Hendrix have sounded like playing a Béla Bartók string quartet? In other words, the sheer power and spirit of the American blues‑rock tradition speaking through Hendrix’s Foxy Lady or Purple Haze.

Suppose instead there was a more European vocabulary, for example – Bartók and early Igor Stravinsky were very influential on me. Also, may I say Claude Debussy must be included in that with whole tone – the Debussy vocabulary was part of my epiphany as a young player, listening to all these different forms of music as if it were one musician playing all these different elements, one musician speaking in a number of dialects.

That, for me, was an epiphany and a driving force. Crimson’s music has always been perhaps more varied than some of the other bands working at the same time. So, moving on from Schizoid Man through Larks’ Tongues in Aspic and arriving at Red, a particular feature of Bartók's writing was his use of the golden section [or golden ratio].

That’s apparent in the title track, correct?

Red uses the golden section within it. So Red, in a sense, is very much in a European folk music tradition, as coming through Bartók for me. It was instinctive that, for example, with Red, why would it have a five into a four? The answer is, because that’s the way you play it, no intellectual analysis.

You strap on and rock out, and that's what comes out at the end of it. On the introduction, the vocabulary is, once again, from one point of view of folk vocabulary from Eastern Europe.

The second track, Fallen Angels, includes a lot of interesting guitar flourishes. How did you approach that?

You strap on and rock out, and some things work better than others. [Laughs]

So it was a lot of improvisation as opposed to being thought out?

Yeah, that’s it. I kept a diary at the time, and for the first time since I wrote it 50 years ago – and it was never written for publication, this is my personal diary, various mental exercises, how I’m addressing my day, my thought process, feelings, and so on – I went back to it this afternoon.

My entry for Monday, July 8, 1974, the first day of recording, was: “Idea. Let everyone do what they want. Is that cowardice?” And then it goes on: “Today, my life has changed: glimpsed possibilities and prices to pay.” That’s just personal notes to myself. Then we go on to Monday, July 15, with another quote: “[Bruford's] drumming begins to irritate me. Held myself back from passing opinions.” And so, on we go.

That brings up the subject of the chemistry and working relationship between you, Bill Bruford, and John Wetton.

Here’s one from Wednesday, July 24, 1974: “Argument with Bill Bruford. Bill says, ‘They might as well get a session guitarist.’”

I suppose things were a bit tenuous between band members by this time.

Yeah. And I think whenever I consider a situation or an event or an undertaking, there are four criteria I apply to come to a view or judgment: time, place, person, and circumstance. Now, 1974 was the beginning of my entry into a liminal zone. Liminal zones are between points and processes. Qualities of liminalities can be found in places, times, people, and processes.

The liminal zone is the in-between zone. Three characteristics of liminality are ambiguity, hazard, and opportunity; the situation is non-determined. In King Crimson, we were at the end of my first seven years as a professional musician in London, from 1967 to ’74, at the beginning of the next seven-year period, in which King Crimson comes to an end, and in ’81, where King Crimson begins again. So the making of Red was ambiguous, characterized by hazard, but also opportunity.

Opportunity, as in the making of the music or the openness to change?

King Crimson had moved from being a five-piece to a four-piece at the beginning of ’73. David Cross had just left, partly by his own volition, and partly because John Wetton, in particular, didn't see any further possibility of King Crimson with David. And this was an interpersonal tension at the time.

I was very fond of David Cross, but nevertheless, in the evolving power dynamic of Bill, a very energetic drummer, constant activity, and John, a remarkably powerful and increasingly loud bass player, the front line of David Cross on violin and myself, we were struggling to stay, not on top, but shall we say, alongside.

And David’s instrument was a violin, and at the time it was not amplified. You didn't have amplified violins generally. So David – you couldn’t hear him. He couldn't hear himself. On stage, John Wetton was so loud that the front-of-house man had to simply take John out of the PA system. Even then, we weren’t able to overcome John’s volume. These were the kinds of dynamics and tensions we were dealing with.

Would you say those frustrations manifested as the heaviness of Red?

Yeah, I do. I think that’s what gave it an edge.

One More Red Nightmare balances catchiness with controlled chaos.

I believe John’s part came from an idea from a song back in ’72. We’d been throwing around in improvs at least through ’73, and then in the studio, pulling the parts together, and the arpeggiated section at the end I think probably came from within the recording session itself.

Now, conventionally in Crimson, I preferred us to play material live so that it’s inside the body. So when we get into the studio, you just throw it away and go with the music, wherever it leads you. But since we had some experience working together, we were able to pull together a number of ideas that were already in the Crimson cyber world, if you like, and pull them together with some coherence.

The back half of Red consists of two sprawling tracks, Providence and Starless. Are those long jams, or was there a lot of puzzling together with bits and pieces?

In terms of Providence, the piece originally included on the Red album was edited down to eight minutes. And from the notes from my diary, which I consulted this afternoon, just for you, I saw from the notes that we were listening to several improvs that we'd recorded live just on the final tour in America, including another improv from Providence and a live track from Asbury Park, New Jersey.

The simple example that Bill Bruford generally gives is, well, we didn't have enough written or composed material. Yeah, that's one fair comment. The second is that improvisation was such an essential part of King Crimson, and improvisation in the studio, by and large, doesn’t have the power of improvisation in front of an audience.

Why? When the audience is there, you have a family like a father, mother, and child. You have music, the musician, and the audience. The audience is mother to the music. And if you’re improvising in front of an audience, there’s nothing like exposure to public ridicule to galvanize your attention. Now, if the drunk in the third row really doesn't like what you’re doing, the bottles might come flying this way.

So when you’re improvising or playing in front of an audience, there is always an element of risk and uncertainty that you won’t find in a studio. That conveyed a part of what King Crimson was musically; we chose something we came to a consensus on, and that became Providence.

Was it a similar situation with Starless?

John regretted that, when he presented this to us in 1973, we didn’t recognize it. Well, it wasn’t complete. And in ’74, we did recognize it, and we played it live.

But if you listen to the live tracks, you’ll find that the lyrics aren’t complete, and on some lines, you hear John singing, but he’s singing a line, and he’s articulating, he’s vocalizing sounds but the lyrics aren’t written.

So clearly, in 1973, at the time of Starless and Bible Black, the song Starless wasn’t completed. But we had the song, which was a stunning song, may I say, breathtaking and quietly heartbreaking. And when Crimson was playing this song from 2014 to 2021, I was closely in touch with John and would email him from the road.

We played Starless, and on occasion, it was hard to keep a tear down. But there we are anyway. So, we have Starless, and then at the end of it, Bill came up with his gang-gang sound.

Now, Bill said to me around 1972 at the beginning of Larks’ Tongues, “I see it as my job to give you 100 ideas. And it’s fine if you throw out 99 of them.” So Bill was happy to live with a 99 percent failure rate. Me, I think a 10 percent failure rate – where you present 10 ideas and one doesn’t work – is a better way to go. But Bill’s one idea in 100 that worked was stunning.

He came up with this idea, and I began playing the very simple one-note version on two strings, moving up slowly as the changes happen with anticipation and retardation where they move in respect of the changes. That line is referred to by Steven Wilson as the “death of the prog guitar solo,” because it does virtually nothing other than move up slowly and incrementally until it really opens out widely.

As far as gear, did you primarily use your ’59 Les Paul across Red?

You have my Gibson Les Paul and a Hiwatt stack. By and large, that’s really enough for anyone if they have a background in analog. But I used my Pete Cornish pedalboard, which had a volume pedal, fuzz, and wah-wah. And also a [Watkins] Copicat echo unit. And hey, that’s pretty basic, but at the time, to actually have a pedalboard was sophisticated. I mean, that’s astonishing, isn't it?

It is. Save for Frank Marino, few players had full pedalboards in the mid-Seventies. That’s relatively high-tech stuff for the time.

Well, what I did was introduce one technical innovation. If you plug through a pedal, you lose gain and the signal gets weaker. So I suggested to Pete Cornish that he put in a bypass pedal so you have volume, but you have to switch in your fuzz or wah-wah if you want to use them, and when you don't, you switch it out. Now, that sounds so dumb, but at the time, it was actually a technical innovation – astonishing! [Laughs]

One of the tricks we used to use, for example, are Marshall stacks, where you'd have four inputs onto a Marshall stack – channel one and channel two – with an input and output on each. Those in the know would put an input on channel one and lead it to an output on channel two. So channel two would crank channel one; it’s a simple analog technique that I learned in ’69, and boy, would that give you some crunch.

If you look at the back cover of Red, there’s a picture of a needle moving into the red zone, hitting a critical point where, I suppose, it will blow. There seems to be some symbolism there regarding the state of Crimson while recording Red. Seeing as you have your diary open, can you give direct insight into your mindset and what led to Crimson breaking up after Red’s release?

Looking at that today, what does that tell me? That tells me, “Hey, dude, crank it. Go for it as far as it can possibly go. No compromise.”

Looking at Fripp and Brian Eno [Fripp & Eno, officially], there’s the album title (No Pussyfooting) [1973], and the title came from what I wrote on a piece of paper at the session to record, meaning no compromise, no wussing out, because the management and record company aren’t going to like this. So, most “no pussyfooting” was the equivalent to crank. If there was going to be an alternative title for Red today, I would say call it Crank.

At the time, my direction in life was somewhere else. And moving through these diaries for the time, I saw myself going into retreat. Here’s an entry: Saturday, July 13, 1974: “I went down from London to Wimborne to see my mum and told her that it was around the fifth of July, just immediately getting back from New York and the final Crimson show, that it became obvious to me that I had to leave the industry and go into retreat.”

And I told my mother, and this is a quote I had not remembered, where my mother said to me, “Why can’t I have normal kids?” [Laughs]

Anyway, for me, I had to leave Crimson, but that didn’t mean Crimson had to end. So, the question for me was how to keep King Crimson going as an authentic King Crimson – but without me. And in these various entries, an early one was where I’d called a violinist who worked with ELO, and maybe he would replace David Cross and keep the band going.

And I see that I called Steve Hackett on a number of occasions and that Steve was a guitarist who could maybe replace me. All of these are discussions underway, and I felt a responsibility to the band and the road managers because they had working lives, and I felt responsibility toward them.

But eventually, [manager] David Enthoven made it fairly clear to me that they weren’t interested in a King Crimson without Robert. So, at that point, I phoned up Bill and John and said, “Well, this is it.” So that, I guess, was that, and Bill wasn’t happy. There’s various quotes you’ll find from interviews at the time… I think Bill was disappointed. I think John was too. But what to say? I wasn’t able to persuade anyone about an alternative way of King Crimson moving forward.

Red wasn’t a hit, but in the years since, it’s become beloved, especially in the U.S. What’s more, it’s become very influential on heavy metal and prog. Tumultuous as it was, it seems like an important moment in your trajectory. How do you look back on it now?

It is one of the three Crimson albums that, for me, has a completeness or integrity about it, along with In the Court of the Crimson King and [1981's] Discipline.

Looking at it objectively – and as a fan – I can see why you feel that way. But I’d love to hear your perspective on why you feel that way.

Red is a complete and satisfying statement. In the Court is a complete and satisfying statement. Discipline is a complete and satisfying statement. If you didn’t have any of the albums in between, you would think, “Yeah, I can see this band's journey…” If you put the other albums in between, you can see how we got from Court to Red.

Discipline is interesting because it came completely out of the blue. No one could have seen that coming. On the other hand, how could it not have been what it was? You probably know that Red was the album found in Kurt Cobain’s CD player, and Butch Vig told John Wetton that seeing Crimson, I think in Salt Lake City in ’74, was a very powerful moment for him.

I do. Those stories only give credence to Red’s legacy and impact.

When Billy Sheehan was in Japan, I think in 2000, he invited me into the dressing room and began playing Frame by Frame on bass with Paul Gilbert. Billy later told me that if he had to take three albums to a desert island, Red would be one of them. And I trust Billy’s point of view.

Hey, look, I can’t make assessments on this, but those are the three pivotal albums for me. In the Court of the Crimson King and Red bookcase that first period, and Discipline somehow keeps it going – but from an entirely different dimension.

• Red: 50th Anniversary is out now via Panegyric
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Robert Fripp’s genre-amalgamating prog giants, King Crimson, might not have had the same rough-and-tumble aggression as the heavy metal bands that followed in their wake, but there was a heaviness to their music that helped bridge the gap between rock and its louder, angrier cousin, Fripp believes.

The guitarist has scoffed at the fact that the band doesn’t always get its due for helping set the scene, despite Ozzy Osbourne’s well-documented love of the group.

By 1971, Fripp began to butt heads with their chief lyricist, Peter Sinfield, who, inspired by a holiday to the Spanish island of Formentera, envisioned a gentle, Miles-Davis-goes-Mediterranean sound moving forward. It influenced their fourth album, Islands, but with its follow-up, 1973’s Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Fipp tells Guitar World that his “metal voice” was beginning to find its volume.

Even on their 1969 debut LP, In the Court of the Crimson King, the band's penchant for heavy was apparent – 21st Century Schizoid Man “was about as metal as it gets,” Fripp says (indeed, GW included it on our list of the 20 heaviest songs before Black Sabbath). But on Larks, that sound grew more prominent.

“I saw a recent video on YouTube on the 10 precursors to heavy metal, and …Schizoid Man wasn’t among them,” Fripp tells Guitar World. “That’s absurd. I mean, Ozzy Osbourne not only recorded it on a solo album [2005’s Under Cover, which included a guest spot from Joe Bonamassa], but he was always generous enough to acknowledge Crimson.

“The powerful, metallic element has always been there in Crimson,” he underscores. “For me, it became increasingly articulated in the simple question: What would Jimi Hendrix have sounded like playing a Béla Bartók string quartet?”

One man’s simple question is another’s mind-boggler, I suppose.

“In other words,” he then adds, “the sheer power and spirit of the American blues‐rock tradition speaking through Hendrix’s Foxy Lady or Purple Haze.”

King Crimson does get their share of love from certain factions of the metal community – a cover of Larks Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2 is a bonus track on Dream Theater’s Black Clouds and Silver Linings, for instance.

Voivod have also covered Schizoid Man, and Between the Buried and Me's take on Three of a Perfect Pair is another standout. But just how much their harem scarem heaviness is acknowledged in the genre’s folklore is often understated at Fripp's behest.

For the full interview with Robert Fripp, pick up a copy of Guitar World issue 600, on sale now.

“There’s a funny sense you get when you first make a record,” Greg Lake told Bass Player back in 2016. “There's the immediate satisfaction if it's a hit, but when it stands the test of time, you get a different satisfaction. You see where going the extra mile to make it right really pays off.”

Lake was referring to his work with seminal prog-rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), whose legacy was built upon the somewhat unlikely success of songs like Lucky Man, Karn Evil 9, Tarkus, and Fanfare for the Common Man.

They are one of the few prog-rock bands to have cracked the Billboard charts, and with songs that utterly defy Top 40 convention, no less.

ELP formed in 1970 after Lake departed King Crimson, a band he helped canonize with his childhood friend, guitarist Robert Fripp. King Crimson's debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King – Lake's sole recording with the band – remains one of the most influential albums of the prog-rock genre.

It was one of the first rock records to eschew blues influences, drawing instead on classical, jazz, and symphonic music.

For Lake, who switched from guitar to bass guitar when he joined, it provided the template for ELP, a band defined not only by the members’ immense musical talent, but also by their deft adaptations of classical music.

“I was very cavalier when I picked up the bass. They really wanted me as the lead singer, and so Robert said, ‘Would you be prepared to play bass?’ And I thought, ‘Four strings, six strings... what could be the problem?’

“Little did I realize that bass playing is an entirely different world; it's an art form within itself. And although the instruments look similar, they perform a totally different function – they require a different set of skills and knowledge.”

How did you develop your playing style?

The first thing to wake me up to the difference between guitar and bass was the first rehearsal I did with King Crimson. Michael Giles, the drummer, started to bang furiously on his snare, and the whole band stopped.

He looked up at me – I'll never forget the look on his face, a look of pity, sort of annoyed – and he said, ‘Listen, when I play the snare drum, you don't play. That's how the snare cuts through.’ It was my first rude awakening to bass playing.

How would you describe your sound and style?

In the beginning, my bass playing was mixed with guitar technique, but the first thing I missed was sustain. I used tape-wound strings, and immediately I found it unrewarding not to be able to sustain a note. And so I soon discovered wire-wound strings, which gave me the sound that I was looking for, which was the low end of a Steinway piano. That's the sound I wanted.

Do you ever play fingerstyle, or do you always use a pick?

I'm a pick player. When I started playing fingerstyle, it was literally, ‘boom, boom, boom.’ The more percussive way to play was with a pick. And of course, because I played guitar for all those years, I could pick well, so that was my game.

Would you say it's more challenging to sing and play bass than to sing and play guitar?

I don't know about challenging, but it is different. When you play guitar, you have the choice of whether to play or not to play. With bass, you're going to play whether you like it or not, because you're part of the rhythm section. If you stop, the whole thing falls apart.

In ELP, you played both bass and guitar. How did you decide which instrument to play on any given song?

I always craved playing the guitar. It's in my soul, but the problem, when I played guitar, was that the bass went missing. Keith would sometimes try to put bass in, using organ pedals or Moog pedals, but it was never the same.

There's so much going on between Palmer's drumming and Emerson's keyboards. Was it challenging to fit basslines into that milieu?

To be perfectly honest, I did find it challenging with Carl. He doesn't have what I would call a very solid feel. Technically, he's incredibly competent – he's a great, fast, technical drummer – but from a bass player's standpoint, if I play with someone like Sheila E., for example, or Jeff Porcaro, the floor is really solid.

Carl's style is based very much on Buddy Rich and jazz, and the tuning of his drums is incredibly high. His kick was more ‘boop, boop’ than ‘thud, thud.’

As a producer I had to work very hard to make the bass and the bass drum marry up. There was a clash that, in a strange way, became the identity of ELP.

You produced the first six ELP records, as well as In the Court of the Crimson King. Would you agree that bass players seem to make good producers?

Maybe there's some truth to that. You do have a certain perspective as a bass player of what's going on around you, or maybe it has to do with personality. I didn't have any ambitions of becoming a famous producer; I just enjoyed doing it. All of the records I produced went platinum, and the ones I didn't, didn’t.

What separated ELP from the rest of the herd back in the ’70s?

We looked to different roots. Most rock ’n’ roll at that time was based on American blues, gospel and Motown. We didn't want to be just another band basing ourselves on the same stuff every other band had based their music on. So we looked to European roots rather than American.

We looked to European Folk music, minstrel music, classical music – everything from Greensleeves to Mars, the Bringer of War, because it made our music different. It was a different type of music. I don't like to say it was better music, because I don't believe that.

Good-quality blues is as good as Beethoven. But Beethoven is undoubtedly more colourful harmonically, instrumentally, and structurally.

What do you think of music nowadays vs. in the ’60s or ’70s?

In those days, there was a premium on originality. You'll often hear the word ‘progressive’ used in terms of me. I don't like that word; it sounds elitist and pretentious. The word ‘original’ – striving for originality – would be far better.

When ELP and King Crimson started, the essence was to be original, to be different. We never thought about being progressive, we thought about being different, and there was a value in that. Nowadays everyone sounds the same.

Now the hysteria surrounding King Crimson offshoot Beat is dying down, Adrian Belew knows what’s next. “I want to get back to angry guitar and also fretless guitar,” he says.

It couldn’t be a better time for the Zappa, Bowie, and Fripp alum to revisit those styles – he’s just had carpal tunnel surgery and reports he’s recovering well. “The speed I’m playing at is as good as ever,” he says of his left hand’s progress.

“With some things, I had to practice hard to get back up to speed,” he explains. “The thing about being older is keeping yourself in shape and keeping yourself creative. I’ll keep making new records – making music is the most important thing to me. The performance is just the second half.”

What’s the prognosis for your left hand?

“It was an easy recovery and an easy operation; no problem at all. While recovering you can’t do much with it and it’s a little tender. Then you finally work back up to tempo. I’m playing as I always did – except there’s no more pain.”

What exactly had been going on?

“My hand started getting numb, and during part of the Beat tour it would stay numb from the moment I woke up until sometime during soundcheck. It was a little scary. I’d be like, ‘You better wake up soon here, hand!’”

Was there a moment you feared that you might not play again, or it might impact your playing forever?

“Yes – but also, not really. Steve Vai was able to walk me through the process since he’s had it done twice. He assured me it was a simple operation and it wasn’t going to go wrong. And he introduced me to one of the best surgeons in the US.

“Dr Azari is so good at what he does. He was one of the first surgeons who did a hand transplant successfully. So, carpal tunnel, for him, is like changing strings! I was actually going to ask him to put on a second left arm, to see what I could do with three hands on the guitar!”

Have you needed to circumvent the impact of age on your playing?

“The truth is I’ve never worked on the basis of notes, speeds, scales, and all that stuff. The physical aspect of it was never as important to me as the mental aspect. I imagined making the guitar do more than just what it does.

“A lot of guitar players just want to be like their heroes; but as you get older that gets harder and harder. But I can still get the sounds I’ve always gotten, so it’s not harder – there’s just more of them!”

You and Steve Vai both have histories with Fank Zappa. Has that helped you forge a working relationship together?

“The year I spent with Frank was the first and only time I’ve ever had serious instruction. Frank was a great teacher and very generous to me. He taught me a lot of things about music and the business of music. It wasn’t just how to play odd time signatures or do wild stuff, but how to behave and have a life as a professional. All those things were unknown to me.

“Steve and I agree that when you go through what Frank teaches you, you come out as a high-quality professional. You know you’ve got to play things consistently and correctly and that you can’t mess around. The main thing Frank wanted from you was to show up at every gig in perfect shape and do the music correctly.”

Without that Zappa training, could you have handled working with David Bowie thereafter?

“It would have been harder to some degree, but I think that music could have been done. But then you move forward a year or two, and I’m in King Crimson, where it’s all about playing in one time signature, and singing in another.

“I would have had a much more difficult time with that if I hadn’t worked with Frank. By the time I came out of that I was very comfortable with odd time signatures – I could write in seven, five, nine, or whatever was required. I understood it from a different basis than some people might have.”

What was Frank’s explanation of odd time signatures?

“It was that you felt the accents. If it’s a seven, that’s what you’re feeling. You’re not counting seven – that would be ridiculous. I’d been a drummer since I was 10, so once I understood that it rang a bell: ‘All I have to do is learn what those accents are, and then I can play in 15.’ I’ve been doing it ever since. Without Frank I would have just been guessing.”

Did that idiosyncratic thinking makes you appealing to Talking Heads?

“Absolutely. They needed someone to throw a lot of color on the painting, and someone who could break loose and do wild soloing. Those things were the perfect additions to their music, but they couldn’t do them. They were really nice to me; they loved what I did and were very supportive.”

Have you ever wondered how an off-the-beaten-track player like you keeps finding himself at the center of pop culture moments?

“I don’t know… You think of people like David Bowie, innovators, and I think I belong in that club. I certainly don’t belong in the club that's doing sessions every day, or the club that’s shredding, or any other club!

“But club I do belong to is the one where you do interesting things that no one else has done. As I said, I always wanted to express sounds with the guitar, more than just knowing how to play the notes. I guess that's how I’ve moved from one thing to another so quickly.”

What are some of your favorite off-kilter guitar sounds?

“The first one that comes to mind is a piece I wrote for my second solo record, Twang Bar King, called Ballet for a Blue Whale. I wanted to make the guitar sound like it was an actual whale. An expert informed me that it’s not the sound of a blue whale – it’s the sound of a humpback whale! But ‘blue whale’ sounds more artistic! Figuring out how to do that was a tremendous thing.

“You have to play through a synthesizer. Then I put it through a delay with an expression pedal. Then I made it so you weren’t hearing the original note – just the note that was being bent by the expression pedal. It could go all over the place. It was fascinating to hear and do that.

“Many times when I’m doing something it just catches my ear, and that takes me in a new direction which leads to new music and songs. Like, if you don’t have the tight, fuzzy sound on the song Big Electric Cat, you’ll never come up with the song Big Electric Cat!”

What pedal did you use for that?

“That’s a Foxx Tone Machine, a pretty underrated ’60s pedal that I found in a pile in a music store. Once I realized what it could do I did so many things with it.”

What’s the most interesting pedal you’re currently using?

“On stage with Beat I play an Electro-Harmonix Echo Flanger. Not many people realize this, but with the five-way mode selector switch you can catch it between two modes. If you do that with the feedback turned all the way up, you can get all kinds of crazy sounds.

“You can make it sound like big, flying metal insects, or make it so that it slows things down. It’s just a monster thing – but it really wasn’t supposed to be that. It was accidental, so thanks for the accidents!”

What sounds are you looking to mess with next?

“I think I’d like to do some tricky stuff with delays and pitches. I wrote a piece a long time ago called Variations of Wave Pressure in which I could play one note, get another note in harmony and a bass note as well.

“You can come up with some really interesting things if you do that. And you’re actually not playing much if you take away the effects – you can’t play a lot because it’ll be too busy. You’re making sure the notes fit properly, which can be really great.”

• Beat will release Beat Live on September 26.

Adrian Belew is currently touring alongside fellow electric guitar behemoth Steve Vai – as well as bass and drums extraordinaires Tony Levin and Danny Carey – under the moniker BEAT to celebrate his King Crimson catalog.

However, one of his earliest gigs was with Frank Zappa. In a story for the ages, the avant-garde musician discovered him in 1977, while Belew was playing with Sweetheart at Fanny's Bar in Nashville. What would transpire was a year that Belew has often described as a “crash course” in music theory – and to an extent, in life.

“The year that I spent with Frank was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction,” Belew tells Guitar World as he reflects on that game-changing year. “Frank was a great teacher and very generous to me. He taught me a lot of things about many different things to do with music and the business of music.”

Belew clarifies that it wasn't just about playing odd time signatures, or doing “the wild stuff within his [Zappa’s] music”.

Rather, it was a full crash course in music business – specifically, “How to behave and have a life as a professional touring musician and recording artist who goes around the world. All of those things were absolutely unknown to me.”

Playing alongside Vai, who also went through what we might call the Zappa School of Music, Belew noticed some throughlines in their approach to both music and the business.

“I think that both Steve and I agree that when you go through what Frank teaches you, you come out the other end and are truly a high-quality professional,” he reflects.

“You know that you’ve got to play things consistently and correctly, and that you can’t mess around. The main thing that Frank wanted from you was to show up at every gig in perfect shape and do the music correctly.”

In more recent Belew news, the legendary guitarist shared his carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis and how he's recovering post-surgery.

Adrian Belew has been busy celebrating King Crimson’s golden era with what can only be described as a legendary tour alongside Steve Vai, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey.

However, the tour came with its own health challenges, as the multi-instrumentalist recently had his left hand repaired following a bout of carpal tunnel syndrome mid-tour.

“What was happening was that it would get numb,” he explains in a new interview with Guitar World.

“My hand started getting numb, and during part of the [BEAT] tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck. It was a little scary. I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon, here hand!’”

It got to a point where Belew feared he might not play again. However, thanks to Vai, he realized that not all hope was lost. “Steve Vai was able to walk me through the process since he’s had it done twice,” he imparts.

“He reassured me that it was a simple operation and that it was not something that was going to go wrong. And on top of that, he introduced me to one of the best surgeons in the United States, who had done this work.”

As for where things stand now, Belew replies with, “Oh, it's perfect.

“This was an easy recovery and an easy operation. No problem at all,” he reassures fans.

“It was on my left hand, and I’m back to full use of my left hand. While recovering, you can’t do much with it, and it’s a little tender. And then, you finally work back up to tempo. Now, I’m playing as I always did, except that there’s no more pain.”

In more recent Adrian Belew news, cult guitar hero Rob Fetters reflected on forming a lifelong friendship with the King Crimson guitarist – and the time they raced home to try tapping after seeing Eddie Van Halen.

Robert Fripp has revealed he recently suffered a heart attack and is recovering from two emergency surgeries.

The King Crimson guitarist – who also wrote a fascinating trio of albums with The Police’s Andy Summers – turns 79 later this week (May 16), but remains in fine spirits despite the health scare.

Dedicating his latest Upbeat Moments video with his wife and partner in Sunday Lunch insanity Toyah Willcox to reveal the news, they’ve explained how it started with chest pains, which had been persistent for “a couple of weeks”.

“You have had a pretty exceptional two weeks,” Toyah says at the start of the video while looking her husband in the eyes. He then states, “My upbeat moment is: I'm alive.”

Fripp had chalked his pains off as acid reflux. He was then getting ready to fly out to Italy to play at an Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists in Bergamo, and with the pains ongoing, he arranged to see a doctor upon his arrival.

Toyah says her husband found himself “in the right place at the right time” – after an assessment, he was rushed to the hospital. But Fripp wasn’t quite convinced by some of the hospital’s methods.

“Well here's the interesting bit,” he says. “I was in A&E not quite knowing what was going on other than I knew they were going to do something, and an orderly came along and shaved my balls!

Fripp says he was diagnosed as having a trifurcated artery. A pair of stents were inserted during the two surgeries.

Willcox visibly starts to tear up as she explains how the language barrier, with so few medical staff at the hospital able to speak English, shrouded the events in stress and uncertainty. At one point Fripp mistakenly started to remove his clothing when he had been asked what he wanted to eat.

“They were complex moments,” Fripp underscores.

Though unable to perform at the event in the picturesque and mountainous Italian city, he was still able to play a starring role by directing the Guitar Circle show.

“It was stunning,” Fripp purrs. “The audience were prepped with orchestral maneuvers and it really was a magical event for me.”

After giving the band his blessing, Fripp has been watching Beat – the King Crimson tribute band featuring Steve Vai and Adrian Belew – closely from afar. Vai revealed that three days into their first tour, he received an email from Fripp who offered some handy pointers for a song that was getting the best of him.

Guitar World wishes Fripp a speedy recovery.

In the early 1980s, Andy Summers and Robert Fripp – each of whom represented two opposite ends of the electric guitar playing spectrum – formed an unlikely partnership and joined forces for a string of avant-garde albums that jammed together their distinct worlds of stadium rock and prog.

In the new issue of Guitarist, Summers sits down to discuss how the obscure and unexpected guitar duo came to be thanks to a “cosmic connection” – even if he never particularly warmed to some of Fripp’s previous work.

“I wasn’t into King Crimson at all. Definitely not my kind of music,” Summers recalls when asked about the collaboration’s origins, before recalling how the pair swam in similar sonic circles when they were growing up.

“But Robert and I come from the same area of England,” he goes on. “I was part of the Bournemouth music scene and you heard about this ‘weird kid’ out in Wimborne – and it was Robert Fripp because he has a certain style.

“At 16, I got a job as a guitarist in a hotel band with some very stellar jazz musicians. I eventually left and went to London with Zoot Money – actually, I got fired for trying to pick up hotel girls – and Robert took over the ‘guitar seat’, let’s call it. So there’s a sort of cosmic connection there, I suppose.”

Years later, after Summers had flown to America to study music at university, the soon-to-be Police guitarist was in need of reconnecting with the music scene, and it was none other than Fripp who helped him do that, hooking him up with drummer Mike Giles, who was about to go on tour with Neil Sedaka.

Success with The Police soon followed, but before long Summers was on the hunt for another creative outlet to flex his experimental six-string muscles.

“I subsequently became the world’s most famous guitarist with The Police,” he goes on. “And being the kind of searching musician I am, I started looking around.

“I was starting to feel somewhat musically hemmed in by being in that band. I wanted to stretch my legs and play with somebody else, just to see how I’d do, almost like an experiment on myself.

“At that time, Robert was living in New York and I was there all the time. So he popped into my mind: ‘Oh yeah, Robert Fripp, he’s a good guitarist. Maybe we could do something together.’ It started with a fairly casual hook-up, when we went to practise in a photographer’s flat in Soho.”

Those casual jams turned into two albums – 1982’s I Advance Masked and 1984’s Bewitched – and a previously unheard compilation of material named Mother Hold The Candle Steady, which was recently unearthed and released for the first time as part of The Complete Recordings reissue.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist to read the full interview with Andy Summers.

The ongoing BEAT tour has been a true manifestation of the crème de la crème of prog-rock. With former King Crimson members on guitar and bass – Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, respectively – alongside the inimitable Steve Vai and Tool drummer Danny Carey, it's safe to say that it's been a victory tour for the whole genre.

Belew's contribution cannot be understated – and as a guitarist who, like Belew, was once part of the Frank Zappa camp, Vai tells MusicRadar that he “can't say enough about Adrian” and his distinct guitar work.

“I knew about his work with Zappa, but that didn’t show me all of his brilliance. You need to hear him flexing his muscles in different situations to discover the breadth of the man’s abilities. There are his contributions to David Bowie and Talking Heads, but what he did on those ’80s King Crimson records was monumental.”

Having two guitar virtuosos team up as part of a supergroup can either lead to one outshining the other or a scrumptious feast for the ears. Thankfully, for the BEAT tour, it's the latter. “Together we’ve merged our sounds in a way that creates a really dynamic show,” describes Vai.

“I would say Adrian is underrated in the echelons of guitar,” he asserts. “Nobody plays like anybody else, nobody can play like me, but they can get sort of close. Honestly, there’s no one close to Adrian.

“There’s a special way he’s crafted his own dimension of sounds. To see him play this complex polymetric music while singing at 75 is unbelievable. He still hits the notes with that silky voice. He’ll talk and joke around while I have to keep my head down. The man is a marvel!”

While the first run of the BEAT tour took place last year, the next batch of shows is set to kick off in April in South America.

Steve Vai’s guitar tech has spoken about how he saved a show from impending disaster by sourcing a full suite of gear in just four hours. It gives a rare insight into the kind of seat-of-your-pants work that many guitar techs have to pull off day in, and day out. Truly, they are unsung heroes.

Doug MacArthur has been Steve Vai's tech of choice for many years, and it's his ability to find solutions in the heat of the moment that has earned him such a trusted reputation.

“I’ve had some really bizarre gear [and] rig moments,” MacArthur tells Boss. “Those moments can be terrifying at the time, but 20 minutes later, it can be hilarious. It becomes a good story and a great opportunity to learn.”

A one-off show in Dubai saw the tech prove his worth in last-gasp circumstances.

“We traveled to Dubai to play a show. We flew from Los Angeles via London, but none of the gear made it with us,” he recalls.

“So, we landed in the Middle East at about one o’clock in the morning. The gig is the next day, and we have no gear! There was no way we would cancel the gig, but there were no guitars, amps, pedals, or anything. The question is: How am I going to make the show work for Steve Vai?”

As the old adage goes, the show must go on, and MacArthur isn’t one to bow out without a fight.

“Thankfully, with some pieces of gear I had as carry-on luggage and going to every music store there, plus my guy at Ibanez, I could scrounge together enough gear in about four hours for us to do a sound check and the show,” he says, rather breathlessly.

“And it was a great show! But that was the most trial-by-fire moment that I could think of: going to a faraway part of the world and having to pull everything together on such short notice to make a show that has to happen.

“That was an intense one, but it was great afterward. I remember Steve and I sitting on the couch after the gig, just looking at each other like, “Did that happen?”

Boss pedals proved a key part of the makeshift pedalboard he constructed for Vai, saying: “I think we used the CH-1 Super Chorus into two DD-7 Digital Delays. It worked great. And they’re always consistent. You can find them anywhere.”

It differed greatly from the 'board they'd carefully put together for his recent shows with King Crimson supergroup Beat, which saw a Fractal amp modeler at its core.

“The Beat rig is different from the normal Vai rig,” he explains. “It’s basically a wah, overdrive, MXR Phase 90, and a DigiTech Whammy DT. There’s also an Xotic EP Booster which Steve’s really liking lately.

“It’s a little grittier than his normal kind of compressed hi-fi overdrive sound. He used that a lot on this tour, a lot of the time just to give the guitar a kind of ugly boost for certain synth sounds. Things pushed a little too far – that kind of sound. We also used a UA Max compressor. That was just for the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amplifier.”

Beyond that, Vai gets “a host of expression pedals” to play with, as well as Boss’ latest GM-800 and SY-1000 guitar synthesizers.

MacArthur will join Vai on the road once more later this year as part of the SatchVai band. That will see Pete Thorn trade licks with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani across a three-pronged electric guitar attack that celebrates the virtuosos’ historic relationship in a brand-new way.

Adrian Belew has announced he has undergone carpal tunnel surgery after the recent Beat tour left his hand “numb and burning like fire”.

The electric guitar icon spent his 2024 on tour with Beat, the supergroup he formed with Steve Vai, Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey to play King Crimson’s 1980s material with Robert Fripp’s blessing.

Ironically, Steve Vai had spoken of the physical struggles he faced when trying to master Fripp’s “relentless” parts in the wake of a recent shoulder surgery. But it seems that now the tour is over, it’s Belew who has been left feeling the brunt of performing such challenging music.

“Early this morning I had hand surgery for carpal tunnel at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, CA,” he says in an Instagram post.

Something of a guitar player's worst nightmare, carpal tunnel is a condition that affects the nerves in the wrist, with pain, numbness, and weakness in the fingers common symptoms. None of them are handy when trying to perform two sets of punishing prog rock every night.

Thankfully, Belew reports the surgery was a success: “I am super fortunate to have Doctor Azari, a world-renowned surgeon who was the first in America to do a successful hand transplant,” his post continues. “A bit overqualified for my minor surgery. He's a fan!”

Belew says the issue flared up while out on the road, and so he deserves all the plaudits for playing through the pain barrier.

“Throughout the Beat tour, my left hand kept going numb and burning like fire,” he adds. “Try playing Three of a Perfect Pair without feeling your fingertips! It often happened during sound checks but was almost always good by showtime. No worries now, I'll be better than new in no time!”

The tour had provided Belew the chance to dust off his oddball signature Parker Fly guitar – one that’s packed with voice-changing features – and hit the road alongside Vai, who had been singled out as the only suitable Robert Fripp replacement for the band.

Vai’s decision to join the band went against his long-standing anti-supergroup stance, but Beat provided a different kind of opportunity.

“There was something that resonated in me that just said, ‘Yes,’” Vai recently explained. “Because when the appropriate creative project comes to you, there’s something that feels enthusiasm and knowing that it’s meant for you.”

After what he thought was a successful start to the tour, Vai received an email from Fripp, offering playing tips to help him overcome the most challenging song of the set.

Guitar World wishes Adrian Belew a speedy recovery.

When BEAT – the supergroup tasked with performing King Crimson’s trilogy of ’80s albums – formed last year, it did so with the blessing of Robert Fripp, who even coined their name.

The touring project brought together Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and bassist Tony Levin, Tool drummer Danny Carey, and electric guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who was cast as the stand-in for Fripp.

In between that initial announcement and the tour’s opening night, Vai spoke of his troubles with nailing some of Fripp’s “relentless” parts, while Belew theorized about how the Fripp/Belew and Belew/Vai guitar partnerships would compare.

However, while Vai felt the pair had gotten off to a successful start, an email soon landed in his inbox from none other than Robert Fripp, which offered some additional advice on a rather tricky track.

“So this is a funny story,” Vai tells Sweetwater as part of a special mini-documentary of the tour. “We get to our second show and I get an email from Robert. He was commenting on some of the clips he saw, which was very nice and constructive. And then he said at the end, 'Can I make a suggestion for Frame By Frame?’”

Funnily enough, Fripp singled out the song that Vai had struggled with most in the run-up to the tour. Vai had previously cited his shoulder issues, which required surgery, as the reason why he struggled with its demanding endurance.

“‘Why don't you do your hammering with the notes, and then take it out? Improvise your hammering and move from one chord to the other,’” was Fripp's advice.

Vai has previously spoken about the advice he received from Fripp following those early shows, and recently discussed with Guitar World how his approach to tackling Frame By Frame completely changed after receiving that email.

“That was something I’d thought about doing initially, but it would take it far away from the original part,” he said. “But when it came from Robert as a suggestion, I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s my wheelhouse.’

“I did it that night at the show, and it worked beautifully. It’s unique to me – yet it was birthed by Robert and Adrian, you know?”

The talents behind BEAT have previously spoken about how it would be “disrespectful” to label the band as King Crimson, despite half of the group’s history with the iconic prog rock institution.

Yet they wanted to stay as true to the original songs as possible, so it’s surprising to hear Fripp wanted to push Vai into a more individualistic territory. Nevertheless, it showcases Fripp’s understanding that every player approaches the guitar a little differently.

Vai has another chance to put the advice into practice when the band plays Chile in June, with more tour dates expected to be announced in due course.

2024 Year in Review: Though King Crimson, the highly influential English progressive rock band, are spoken of in the past tense these days, founder Robert Fripp ended up giving his blessing to latter member Adrian Belew for a semi-official celebration of his time in the band.

Exploring the music heard on the group’s ’80s albums – namely Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair – the Beat tour consists of Belew on vocals and guitar, joined by bassist Tony Levin (who played on those albums), Steve Vai and Tool drummer Danny Carey.

“The first show of a tour can be like a gauntlet,” Vai reflected on social media after the opening night. “You can rehearse until you’re blue in the face, but once you hit the stage the lights go out and there’s a live audience eager to be entertained, all bets are off.

“But the band delivered well and we were all relieved to get through a good first show.”

Stay tuned; we might want to revisit this in a future interview…

Steve Vai says he has turned down offers to join supergroups in the past, but when the prospect of forming BEAT – the King Crimson-honoring project created with Robert Fripp’s blessing – came along, he was forced to rethink his supergroup stance.

Alongside Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey, Vai was cast in Robert Fripp’s role as electric guitar provocateur as part of the supergroup’s lineup.

Across their recent US tour, Vai and co plucked hits from the band’s trio of 1980s LPs, Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair, to help revive some of King Crimson’s most celebrated material.

Speaking in a new interview with GW, Vai explains what made this particular offer different from all the ones he had been quick to reject.

“It started about five years ago, before the pandemic, when Adrian called me. Before that, I was often asked if I planned to join a supergroup, and my stock answer was, ‘No,’” Vai says. “Most people who approach me to do something like that are looking to relive the glory days of ’80s rock.

“I love that music,” he extends, “but I probably wouldn't consider joining a supergroup unless there was a group of people that were wildly talented, innovative, not so concerned about commercial potential, and willing to make very creative music that's accessible, but not necessarily with an audience in mind.”

As Vai recalls, after a period when “nobody was knocking on my door”, Belew then came along with an offer he simply could not refuse.

“Boom, the phone rings. It’s Adrian Belew, and he’s got Tony Levin and Danny Carey, and I'm like, ‘Yes!'” he goes on. “There was something that resonated in me that just said, ‘Yes,’ because when the appropriate creative project comes to you, there’s something that feels enthusiasm and knowing that it’s meant for you.”

Naturally, the project came with some challenges. Talking about the task of tackling the role, Vai has previously spoken of the “relentlessness” of Fripp's picking technique and the “specific and refined” playing style he’s employed across the band’s celebrated discography. Another challenge lay in establishing a partnership with Belew.

“It really came to the point where Robert and I had separated into our own worlds, like two sides of the same coin,” Belew once observed of the guitar partnership he built with Fripp.

As for how that translated to Vai, he continued, “Steve wants to make sure that what we do is honorable to the originals. Not that we have to play them exactly the same and not that we're going to be a cover band, I believe we will make it our own.”

Vai has never shied from a challenge, and BEAT proved to be too good an opportunity to pass up. After the opening night of the tour, the guitarist took to Instagram to say: “You can rehearse until you're blue in the face, but once you hit the stage and the lights go out, all bets are off.

“It is so enjoyable to play this historical music for such a passionate fan base. I discovered the sincere devotion of the audience for this music and the whole band felt their firm support.”

The full interview with Steve Vai will be published on GuitarWorld.com in the coming weeks.

Robert Fripp was born in Dorset, England in 1946. His 50-plus years of work with King Crimson is full of mind-bending and finger-twisting guitar parts that would take several lifetimes to fully comprehend.

So we will focus on the ’80s era which featured Fripp alongside Adrian Belew on guitar and vocals. Tracks like Frame By Frame, Discipline, and Three Of A Perfect Pair feature a unique guitar style focused on odd, poly-metric riffs, melodies and motifs played with relentless alternate picking.

In 2024 it was announced that a new band named BEAT would feature Adrian Belew and Steve Vai, who was hand picked by Robert Fripp to perform his guitar parts, which Steve himself admits is a challenge of the tallest order.

Each of our examples is played with strict alternate picking in order to give the music rock solid timing and perfect execution. It will challenge your picking accuracy, especially when skipping from string to string without speeding up or slowing down. Take some time to study your picking hand, either by using a mirror, or videoing yourself to look for any excessive motions.

The concept is simple, in that your pick should travel from note to note and string to string in the most relaxed and economical way as possible. Use your wrist to move your hand in a loose, but controlled fashion, using as little of the tip of the pick as you can to produce a clear attack, but avoid digging in too much as this slows down string changes.

Playing these examples confidently and in time with the backing tracks is a numbers game. King Crimson music often layers two or more different time signatures on top of each other.

This concept was inspired by Indonesian gamelan music and applied to the guitar parts by Fripp and Belew. Each part is usually panned left and right and each is each relatively simple once you know the numerical code. But the two parts combined create an illusion of incredible complexity.

In our examples we’ve kept to 3/4 and 4/4 time. Within that, a bar of 16th notes can be divided into any even, or odd note groupings you wish, in order to compose repeating melodic motifs within it.

We have described the numerical codes for unlocking each riff in the tab captions, so be sure to count through each example and be confident you can do it in a way that makes sense to you.

Practising with a metronome is highly recommended, the idea being to focus on keeping the 16th-note phrasing even. The next challenge is to play along with the backing tracks on which we’ve included some Adrian Belew style counter melodies which are often similar to the Fripp-style part, but slightly different, or even displaced through the bar differently.

This is vastly different to playing to a simple metronome click as the sound of the other rhythms will inevitably affect your coordination and sense of where the downbeat is, adding an extra challenge to expanding your discipline. But as they say, ‘no pain, no gain’!

Play each example slowly, focusing on your accuracy, counting, timing and economy of motion before gradually increasing the tempo until you can comfortably play each section up to speed with the backing tracks. Good luck!

Get the tone

Amp Settings: Gain 5, Bass 2, Middle 5, Treble 6, Reverb 1

Robert uses Gibson Les Paul and Fernandes guitars with a Roland JC-120 for his classic clean chorus sound. You can use any clean guitar amp with a chorus pedal and set both the effect rate and depth high.

Use a medium guitar pick to soften the attack on the strings for a more even tone and add a compressor pedal before the amp to further control the overall picking consistency.

Example 1

This riff is based around four repeats of a 10-note pattern that’s played across the bar lines. This not particularly easy pattern can be broken down into smaller groups of 4, 3 & 3. After the four repeats, finish off the bar with two more four-note groups.

Example 2

Here we have an extreme string skipping riff played in a repeating six-note pattern from major in the first bar to minor in the second bar. Use strict alternate picking while moving your hand from the wrist and aim to keep the tip of your pick as close to the strings as possible, without accidentally hitting them until you pick.

Example 3

This riff is based in F# minor pentatonic (F#-A-B-C#-E) and descends using 3rd and 4th intervals played with a series of two string barres played as finger rolls to keep the notes separated. Think of the pattern as four groups of seven 16th notes with the final note being extended to a quarter-note to complete the bar.

Example 4

This riff is based in the A Aeolian mode (A-B-C-D-E-F-G) played with the first finger at 7th fret and fourth finger at the 10th fret. Use all four fingers with one finger per fret to play the notes and keep your pick moving strictly down and up throughout.

Example 5

This is a long riff played in 16th notes across three bars in G whole-tone scale (G-A-B-C#-D#-F). Learn each bar in isolation first before joining them together.

The phrasing of the first bar is mainly based in groups of five notes, bar two is comprised of threes and fours, and the final bar goes back to a five-note pattern.

When it comes to highs and lows, the late John Wetton was a wizard. Onstage with his Asia bandmates – Yes guitarist Steve Howe, drummer Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake & Palmer, and keyboardist Geoff Downes of Yes, Wetton wailed in a tenor singing voice that ranks with any in rock history. At the same time, he issued basslines that complemented his vocals with Baroque-like efficiency.

As if that weren't enough, he frequently underpinned both parts with seismic support tones from his ever-present bass pedals. Highs and lows also describes Wetton's career, a journey that took him through a host of key British rock bands, with numerous trips up the charts and bitter breakups along the way.

It 1971 Wetton performed and recorded with Mogul Thrash and then became a member of Family gaining prominence in England. This led to an invitation from a re-formed King Crimson, resulting in a peak period for the cult prog-rock band, with albums like Starless and Bible Black and Red.

Following that edition's late-'74 breakup, Wetton toured and recorded with Roxy Music and Uriah Heep before reconnecting with his Crimson rhythm section-mate Bill Bruford to form U.K. in 1977.

Three U.K. albums gave way to Wetton's 1980 solo debut, setting the stage for his role fronting Asia, a period he calls an artistic highpoint. Established in 1981, just as the video era was launching, Asia parlayed its pop-meets-progressive sound into hits like Heat of the Moment, Only Time will Tell, and Don't Cry.

A bout with the bottle led Wetton to be temporarily dismissed from Asia (replaced by Greg Lake). Although the other members quickly took him back, Asia wasn't able to duplicate its initial aces, and the group disbanded in 1985.

By 2000, Wetton had re-teamed with Asia members – first in Carl Palmer in the group Qango, and then with Geoff Downes for the Wetton/Downes album, Icon. Finally, in 2006 the original members convened for a successful reunion tour that stretched into 2007 and yielded the CD/DVD Fantasia: Live in Tokyo.

Asia also began works on Phoenix, the group's first studio album in 25 years, and embarked on another globe trot. The tour was interrupted in August 2007, when Wetton underwent triple bypass heart surgery. Wetton died January 3, 2017, after a battle with cancer. He was 67.

We spoke with Wetton in August 2008, with Asia having resumed touring, to get the lowdown on the prog-rock supergroup’s return.

Let's start with the formation of your bass concept.

“I come from the church and from composers like Bach, but my musical life really began when the Beatles and Beach Boys arrived. They put things into color for me, whereas the roots-rock before them had all been in black and white; it was monotone to my ears, with little melodic or harmonic movement.

“The non-root tones of Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson really appealed to me, because church music does that all the time – especially in hymns, where the bass typically moves all over the place the last time through the chorus.

“Essentially, in those days, when they got tired of playing the same bass part they would write a different one just for fun. That triggered my fascination with the placement of the bassline in the chord, and how it compliments the melody.”

“The way I write most often is to have my bass part moving independently or contrapuntally to what I'm singing in the verses, and then have it move parallel in the choruses, harmonizing the melody line. You can hear that on Easy Money with King Crimson; right through Heat of the Moment and Don't Cry with Asia.”

Would you say your bass voice came together in King Crimson?

“Yes, my bass and my musical voice. While working in Mogul Thrash and Family, I had seen bassists as disparate as Jack Bruce, Harvey Brooks, and Miroslav Vitous, and I continued trying to get my hands around James Jamerson's Motown lines. So at 22, I was quite sure of myself, looking to play as many notes as possible! That fit perfectly with the way Bill Bruford played drums.

“After we found our feet with Larks' Tongues in Aspic, I was especially comfortable with my musical input on Starless and Bible Black and Red. In particular, Starless, from Red, was a high-point for me. It's a sonata form, with my ballad at the start, into the demonic tritone bass guitar lick, which Bill wrote, then all hell breaks loose, and finally we're back to the ballad.”

What sort of tone were you going for in Crimson?

“Being that I was sort of balancing lead and support roles, I went with a sound that was quite sharp. It came courtesy of my fingers, sometimes a pick, my '61 P-Bass, Rotosound strings, a Hiwatt amp, and a cheap Italian wah-wah/fuzz pedal.

“Chris Squire and I were really into the bass tone that Ace Kefford got with the Move; it was like the bottom strings on a piano. That's what we were going after.”

How were you constructing your parts?

“We would have improvisational sections built into the setlist, between the songs, and we'd have a signal, which could come from anyone, that would take us into the next piece. So people really didn't know if we were improvising or playing organised arrangements – but you could do that in the '70s!

“For the improvisations, the only rule was that any member could take the lead at any point and the remaining members had to follow. But there'd be no key centre or chord sequence to go by; it was wide open!”

“There was one improvisation called Trio that had a chord sequence I outlined on bass because Robert Fripp was playing Mellotron. Overall, I would say the improv worked. Some nights it was purely telepathic, but it was never disastrous. Crimson was a great band to be in, but we knew it couldn't last forever.”

How did your bass role evolve for U.K.?

“Coming out of King Crimson, I carried a lot of my busy bass style into Roxy Music, and they didn't mind because they liked stretching out. By the time I finally got back with Bill Bruford in U.K., with guitarist Allan Holdsworth and keyboardist Eddie Jobson, the equation had changed. I was now the frontman, and the focus was on structured songs that left little room for improvisation.

“We were being marketed as a rock band, with videos and opening slots for groups like Van Halen. So bass-wise, I really had to be the anchor; that limited my freedom, but I was okay with it. I would call our approach organized chaos, with an awful lot of energy. On the other hand, the lack of improvisation drove Holdsworth up the wall. Still, I think we made a pretty darn good record.”

“When Allan and Bill left and we became a trio with drummer Terry Bozzio, we moved even further in a vocal and song-oriented direction, and my bass playing became even more functional. The two albums the trio did, along with my 1980 solo debut, Caught in the Crossfire, was my transition toward Asia.”

So Asia came at the right time?

“It couldn't have been better. My zest for music, which had taken 30 years to mature, had come to a head. Plus, I was surrounded by great musicians, the right label, the start of MTV; everything was in place. The only thing that could stop me was the self-destruct button, which happened briefly after two albums, but I got back. What really made Asia a success is that we sacrificed individually to create a true band sound.”

While primarily known for his work with King Crimson, Adrian Belew has taken his inventive and boundary-pushing approach to guitar to various camps, including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, to name just a few – heck, he's played so many sessions, he even ended up on a number one Mariah Carey single without realizing it.

This year, he added another star-studded project to his resume: the Beat Tour, alongside Steve Vai, Tool drummer Danny Carey, and King Crimson alumnus Tony Levin.

Joining this troika means Belew is bringing some of his most iconic, career-spanning guitar gadgets and gizmos on the road once more, including his signature Parker Fly – and in a new Rig Rundown with Premier Guitar, he has revealed the guitar's origin story.

“I felt like Ken Parker had taken 20 years to eliminate all the things that normally happen with electric guitars, all the problems you have, the tuning, the neck, the frets wearing out, just everything that normally can go wrong with a Fender or Gibson. He figured it all out,” asserts Belew.

He explains how he first had the Parker Fly – the 1993 model co-designed by Ken Parker and Larry Fishman – for years, before realizing he required a model more tailor-made to his experimental leanings.

“So I called Ken Parker and I said, ‘You know, I've really been wanting to use your guitar. I love it so much, but I need a synthesizer guitar. Is there anyone [or] any way we could do something about [that]?’ I need a MIDI guitar, is what I said.

“He said, ‘Well, that's funny, because when we first brought it out, it was supposed to be a MIDI guitar. It was built to be that.’”

While that was the famed luthier's original plan, the Parker Fly already had a lot of specs that made it revolutionary – not least its light weight, which made it an unlikely guitar of choice for Grand Funk Railroad's Mark Farner.

Accordingly, Belew claims teh guitar had already taken them four grueling years to produce. However, the Beat guitarist eventually managed to persuade Parker to create the MIDI guitar of his dreams.

“I said, 'I just want the most modern things we can have now.' So I was only changing the sound parts, not the guitar.” What transpired was a guitar-meets-synth model with a 13-pin out for MIDI/synth capability, a DiMarzio humbucker, a Sustainiac humbucker, a Fishman piezo, Line 6 Variax components and Parker's flat-spring vibrato system.

“I swear this guitar never goes out of tune. Plays beautifully. I play better with the [signature] Parker Fly. I can't explain it better than that,” Belew concludes.

The 65-date Beat tour kicked off in San Jose, California, on September 12, with the supergroup performing 19 songs across two sets.

Steve Vai and Adrian Belew have finally kicked off one of 2024’s most anticipated live acts with the opening night of the Beat tour.

The pair formed Beat – a supergroup whose name was coined by Robert Fripp – for a tour that will see them play King Crimson’s trilogy of 1980s albums: Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair.

They’ve been joined by King Crimson alumni Tony Levin on bass and Tool drummer Danny Carey for the shows. Vai says he has been working “feverishly” to be stage-ready over the past five months.

The 65-date tour began in San Jose last Thursday (September 12), with the band delivering a 19-song show across two sets.

“The first show of a tour can be like a gauntlet,” Vai reflected on social media afterward. “You can rehearse until you're blue in the face, but once you hit the stage the lights go out and there’s a live audience eager to be entertained, all bets are off as to what it’s like in rehearsal. But the band delivered well and we were all relieved to get through a good first show.

“I’ve been fronting my band for the last 35 years and I discovered a very comfortable place on the Beat stage with master of ceremonies, Brother Adrian Belew at the helm. It is so enjoyable to play this historical music for such a passionate fan base. I discovered the sincere devotion of the audience for this music and the whole band felt their firm support.”

Indeed, a big part of Vai’s prep for the shows focussed on finding that balance between playing like himself and playing like Robert Fripp, who he is essentially replacing.

Speaking to Guitar World, Adrian Belew, who spent just shy of two decades as the band’s co-guitarist alongside Fripp, had previously theorized about how the two guitar partnerships would compare.

“It really came to the point where Robert and I had separated into our own worlds,” he said. ”But I always said the perfect analogy was like two sides of the same coin. Because Robert has his approach, and I had my approach.

“I suspect Steve and I will end up being the same as Robert and me – a different version of it, of course, but two sides of the same coin.”

Footage from the opening night shows the band working through Man With An Open Heart, a song rich with chiming-yet-biting clean guitars, driven by Belew. But when it comes to the leads, there's a distinctly Vai-like flavor to the way they are delivered, complete with some subtle whammy bar wavers.

That trend continues on Heartbeat, with some overdriven volume swells and swish cleans coming from Vai's Ibanez signature guitar. It feels like a very natural marriage between the Fripp and Vai styles – something that will surely excite fans of both world-class players.

Of course, this is Steve Vai, who can make even the most finger-breaking shred look as simple as brushing your teeth. But in the five months leading up to the show, Vai wrestled with his abilities and his physical limitations in the wake of undergoing shoulder surgery.

That surgery meant wielding his ridiculous Hydra guitar became a challenge. It also meant living up to Fripp's endurance and “the absolute relentlessness of what he does” made Vai's task all the more tricky.

“I am looking so forward to the roll out of this tour and being on stage with such seasoned and immensely talented bandmates,” Vai’s post concludes. “Not to mention they are all outstanding people that I enjoy being with. Thanks so sincerely to our San Jose audience for making this first show such an enjoyable experience.”

Head to Beat for details regarding the rest of the tour.

“How lucky am I that Bob Ezrin thought I was a really good heavy rock player?” Tony Levin asks Bass Player. One of the more prolific session artists in history, having appeared on over 500 albums, he’s heard in the catalogs of Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Alice Cooper, John Lennon, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, Tom Waits and Warren Zevon, among others.

“Bob asked me to play on Alice Cooper albums,” Levin says. “Then he asked me to join the rhythm section for this unknown guy named Peter Gabriel. I didn’t know Genesis – but how lucky I am that Bob heard that in my playing? Because from then on, it was pretty much non-stop.”

Born Anthony Frederick Levin in Boston, Massachusetts, he’s preparing for a 65-date tour alongside Adrian Belew, Steve Vai and Danny Carey, playing the ‘80s music of King Crimson under the Beat banner.

Cross-genre four-stringers like Les Claypool, Nick Beggs, Zach Cooper and Juan Alderete de la Pena cite him as an influence. “It’s not something I think about,” he says. “I just try to find something good for the piece.”

“It might end up with me playing a very sparse, low thumpy thing, or interceding with melody or playing chords. I’ve done that quite a bit by playing double stops, which helps the melody. I don’t have rules. When I react to a piece, I don’t approach it in terms of what a bass player ought to do. I just get a sense of what I’m going to do.”

He continues: “Bass players automatically listen and learn – even if it’s learning what you’re not going to do. I’m always listening and learning, and the players who influence me surprise me.”

He adds: “I learned not to copy what they did, and to appreciate the ability to step outside the expected and find something different but appropriate. That’s what I love about bass and bass players, young and old – they’re always teaching me.”

How are the preparations for the Beat tour coming along?

“I’m rehearsing daily. It’s sounding good. The players are amazing and we’re very excited about the tour. Adrian has been working for about five years to put this band together to play that music. He harkened back to how wonderful it was; and I agree.

“He and I, in contexts separate and together, have played the music many times over the years. It’s great music and certainly worthy of – I don’t know if you’d call it an all-star band, but specific players who love that music and want to revisit it.”

It’s music you helped create. Has it been easy to pick up again?

“It should have been because I made up the parts, but I’m finding it not so easy. I had some wild ideas about counter rhythms and counter time signatures on the Chapman Stick, so it’s challenging. But I like challenges, so the other guys are kicking me in the butt a little, and I’m trying to keep up.”

What’s it like watching Adrian Belew and Steve Vai chop it up on guitar?

“It’s amazing to hear and amazing to see. I’m a photographer in addition to being a bass player, and my temptation is to pick up the camera and take pictures of them about every 30 seconds! I have to remind myself to stick to my job and leave the photography for in-between pieces.”

What gear are you taking on the road with you?

“It’s very simple, not like in the ‘80s. I use a Neural DSP Quad Cortex multi-effects unit. We can’t have a lot of weight in the travel suitcase, so that’s very handy. It also has two stereo inputs and stereo output, which the Chapman Stick needs because it has a guitar and a bass side.”

“I’m not using any effects pedals. I’ve got my old Music Man Stingray four-string bass – the one I painted the colors of the album cover of Three of a Perfect Pair back in the mid-80s. What could be more appropriate than dusting that off? And I have my five-string Stingray, which I’ll play on one or two pieces; but it’s mostly the four-string.”

You’ve got a new album, Bringing it Down to the Bass, out on September 13. What’s the lowdown?

“It features a lot of different basses, and I even took photo portraits of each of the them for the booklet with the CD. I like different sounds, so there are other great players on the album. That’s pretty darn important. In fact, to me, that’s the most important part of the album.

“I had a lot of material from years of writing at home. I tour so much that I couldn’t finish the album – a good problem to have. But I tried to get a sense of what this album should be, and I rejected about half the material for future stuff. It’s a nice representation of different bass techniques, sounds and instruments.

“Most of the pieces start with a bassline or bass effect. I got a sense of what the piece would be like, and then, pretty early in the process, I would think about what drummer I’d have on it, send it to them, and build the track.

“There were twists and turns; not always in the way I’d intended, but that’s great because I try to be open to things. I ended up with an album focused on bass sounds and techniques.”

We know you’re a musical chameleon, but is there any carry-over in terms of style, regardless of the genre or gear?

“Very good question – but I’ll give you an unsatisfying answer! I don’t really think in those terms. I listen to a piece that’s being presented, and I react to it. In my musical brain, I begin to get a sense of what sound would fit; whether it should thump, be a long singing note, or something high.

”It’s not so much thinking of parts or notes, though there are exceptions, but trying to fashion an idea that will help the piece of music.”

Does working with an unorthodox songwriter, like Peter Gabriel, for example, spur you on to creative places you might not go otherwise?

“Recording is about working out the parts between the artist who wrote the piece, me, and the other musicians. Sometimes it changes a bit. I’m open to the ideas of the writer, especially if it’s Peter. He has a wonderful, outside-the-box way of thinking that inspired me to think outside the box too.

“It’s appropriate for his music, but not so much for some of the other music I did. It’s a process that I don’t think about until afterward, and it isn’t an intellectual process while it’s going on. It’s how I approach the music.”

How does your process look when it’s for your music?

“That’s different. If it’s my piece, I get the whole idea at once and try to record the bass part or the demo and see how it works. Then I’ll change tempos, and experiment with finding what I feel like works for the piece. It changes as it goes; it’s determined by the piece itself.”

Among the guests on the record are Earl Slick, on the song Boston Rocks.

“I brought Earl into the studio just to really rock out on it. He – as really good musicians do – gave me what I wanted and more. He surprised me with what he did. It’s a wonderful experience of bringing really excellent players into your music and seeing where they take it.”

Does being a photographer impact the way you approach bass and songwriting?

“I’m not aware of that happening; but the other way around, it happens a lot. One thing the players I love have in common is they’re really musical. Aside from their technique and style, they have a broad outlook on the world and the arts. That certainly helps.

“I’m not guaranteeing it’ll make you a great musician, but it helps. In that sense, I have an appreciation for the value of keeping a journal, writing poetry, and looking at the world as a writer and photographer.. There are aspects I can bring to it that are exactly what I bring to the bass.

“Distortion, compression and accentuating the extremes – which are treble, the highs and the lows – are kind of like the blacks and the whites of photography. I have very much gone into the process of adjusting my photography the way I adjust my bass sound.”

You must be asked endlessly about Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and In Your Eyes; but If you were to record those songs today, would you change anything?

“The only experience I have had with Peter Gabriel recently is last year, when I was on tour with him. I played those songs, and I have different gear and instruments. Song by song, it’s different. When you get a song that has a distinctive bass part and it becomes popular, you get locked into that part.

“For instance, Don’t Give Up – I think the whole band would have turned and stared at me if I didn’t play the part that begins the song. Sometimes you’re locked into that; and that’s fine.

“I’m dealing with that right now because the Beat tour is playing the parts I made up in the ‘80s with King Crimson. And yeah, I’m changing them. With a song like Elephant Talk, I’m sticking to the original; but it’s in my hands. I can change them as it becomes appropriate. We’re not trying to be a cover band – if it strays a bit, that’s fine with me.”

Do you consider yourself a prog rock bassist?

“I ended up in the pool of progressive rock, not because of my choosing but because I was lucky enough to play with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson. I do a lot of progressive rock – but when I was choosing pieces for my album, the ones that weren’t appropriate were the very long, progressive rock compositions!’

What are the most important basses in your collection?

“Aside from some compression – usually the Universal Audio or Logic plugins – I try to feature the native sound of the bass I choose for each track.

“I especially like to use the vintage ones, which have their own sound, sometimes enhanced by the old strings and dampers. One track from the album, Floating in Dark Waters, seemed to call for my old Steinberger bass, the first one Ned Steinberger made – a fretless, distinctive sound, almost like an upright.

“My ‘graffiti bass’ is set up with high strings, making it very good for the funk fingers, so I used that on Road Dogs, starting with a featured funk fingers groove. My ‘toast bass’ survived a fire, but it dried out and it has a distinctive, thumpy sound. It seemed right for Espressoville.

“The track Side B is a barbershop quartet, but – breaking the rules of barbershop – I added a little bass solo in the middle, where I used my ‘belle bass.’ That’s a fretless that I’ve set up with strings a fourth higher; not to play higher, but to get that nice singing sound in the range that has the most sustain.”

There’s a recent picture of you sporting what appears to be a very long finger. What is that apparatus?

“That’s a ‘funk finger’ and I sometimes play with two of them on my fingers. They’re chopped-off drumsticks; they came about when, on Peter Gabriel’s So album, I had the drummer play on the bass strings while I fingered the fretboard notes.

“To play the Big Time part live, I needed the drumsticks on my fingers, hence the funk fingers. I’ve played with them a number of times since. They’re on Road Dogs on my new album.”

Are there any other oddball techniques you’ve been exploring?

“I did some hammer-on bass playing on the track Bringing It Down to the Bass. And I did what I call ‘fingernail harmonics’ on the solo of Espressoville. There’s lots of Chapman Stick playing on many songs.”

You’ve got a busy schedule. What are you most excited about?

“The album coming out is really special. I’m trying to let people know about it online; that’s what I do late at night, but the other 22 hours of the day are spent getting the music together for the Beat tour.

“I’m excited about that. Will it be strenuous? Yeah. Will I hold up? I hope so. What will get me through the darker nights and the not-so-pleasant parts is the two hours on stage. Or maybe more than two hours – because that’s what’s special to us. That’s why we do it. And that’s why we’re road dogs, as it were.”

• Bringing It Down to the Bass is available for pre-order now.

Andy Summers is best known as The Police's guitarist. However, his résumé goes beyond that and includes a very intriguing two-album collaboration with King Crimson's Robert Fripp. He recently talked about his longstanding relationship with Fripp and how the two recorded enough material back in the '80s to release a brand-new record in 2024.

“Well, Fripp and I, that situation was not normal. We both came from the same town in England, and he was this other guy that I'd heard about, but I'd never met him. I don't think I did… Maybe I met him once in the town I came from in England. There are a few bands, rockers, and young kids with guitars who want to be guitar players” he tells Ultimate Guitar.

“The weird thing was I played in this hotel. I was like 16 years old, and I got a gig and became a professional musician at 16 in this hotel group, until they threw me out for chasing the girls there, and Fripp took over from me. It was a weird kind of karma.

“He became the next guitar player and he was a very different player, and I can't remember much else in between, except many years later, he helped me out. He got me a gig before I was in The Police.”

Fast-forward to Police fame, and Summers felt he needed to try something else outside the band’s repertoire.

“My interest in music obviously was urging me to try other forms and other ways of playing. Then I had this idea of trying to do a guitar duet with Robert, particularly because we had this local tie-up in our lives from the same town. He was famous, I was famous, there'd probably be an interest in it.”

He continues, “So we got together in New York. Actually, I remember we got together in someone's apartment in the Village and were jamming, trying to see what we could come up with and what the music would be. I could do what I could do, and Robert has got his particular style too, that sort of polyrhythmic way of playing the guitar.”

“And then we went back to our hometown in England. There was a little recording studio, which was also run by a guy that we grew up with. It was called Arny's Shack, a peculiar little recording studio. He was a sort of eccentric. He smoked a pipe while he recorded. We got there, and then we just started working things out.”

While the pair released two albums, 1982's I Advance Masked and 1984's Bewitched, they had enough material for a third installment. These tapes were recently unearthed after someone who knows both Fripp and Summers encouraged the Police guitarist to dig into his archives.

“He was very agitated about it — he works with Robert. I said, ‘Yeah, well, I've got them, but they're all in storage.’ All the two-inch tapes, we put them away. He said, ‘I'd really like to listen to those. Can you get them?’ So we kind of had to go through the motions but eventually, the tapes got out of the storage. They got sent and he got them in England. He reduced them down to whatever. And there's about 12 other tracks.”

Summers admits he was “kind of knocked out” when he heard the tracks, which ultimately led to the decision to release the third installment.

“I went, ‘God, why didn't we do this? Why was I throwing those out?’ Because I was essentially the producer. But listening to some of these songs all these years later, I thought I'd listen to them and think, ‘Oh, my god, well, I see why. They were no good. They're terrible. That's why we didn't use them.’

“But they weren't. They're all really much like the other tracks that we actually put out. And my god, it's a good album.”

A release date for the new/old material has yet to be announced.

Since his days alongside Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew has refused to remain static. Now, at 74, the Kentucky-born Strato-slinger is at it again, this time with his latest and entirely mega project, Beat.

You’ll have heard the news, which Fripp leaked a few weeks before the band formally announced themselves in April. And you’ll be preparing for wild prog rock dreams to come true when Belew hits the stage with Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Danny Carey to celebrate King Crimson’s well-loved ‘80s albums Discipline (1981), Beat (1982) and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984).

Though Fripp declined an invitation to participate, Belew was glad to receive his blessing, because he holds his ex bandmate in the highest esteem.

“It was a great pairing,” Belew says. “We could interlock our styles of guitar playing – but we could also go completely apart from each other. It was wonderful; I knew what he was going to play and vice versa. We did three world tours; and strangely, those records are now coming back into people’s minds again. I think they’re as fresh as ever.”

Taking on King Crimson music without Fripp is challenging, but Belew believes he and Vai are up for it. “The internet is already full of comments and thoughts, so it’s a lot of pressure. I think we’ll do great. Steve and I will have to do the same thing that Robert and I did – Steve and I are going to be guitar partners. I’m absolutely certain he can do it.”

“He’s on tour now with Joe Satriani. I texted him yesterday and I said, ‘I’m thinking about adding these two songs. Did you happen to bring that book of transcriptions?’ And he said, ‘It’s sitting right here beside me on the bus.’ We’ll dedicate ourselves to trying to bring this music from where it once was to where we are now.”

You, along with several other alumni, have been celebrating the music of David Bowie lately. 

“I sometimes join the large expedition, where they put a new band together. I’ve had a lot of chances to go back through that era and listen through it again. What happened to me from ’77 through about ’82, with Frank Zappa straight into Bowie straight into Talking Heads straight into King Crimson, I was traveling at light speed!”

You came in during a pretty experimental period alongside the D.A.M. Trio. What was that like?

“It’s hard to remember because so many things happened so fast. It was like I was halfway dreaming, halfway awake; I just could’t focus – like, ‘This is what’s happening here. Not two years ago, I was making $75 a night, if I made that much, playing in bars. And now here I am at Madison Square Garden with David Bowie!’

“I was lucky to fall into that era of his music; the Brian Eno trilogy, as they call it. They were stretching things and trying a lot of new things, and I seemed a good fit for that. They used to laugh at me, saying: ‘You’re not supposed to be able to play that!’”

It must have been a trip going from working with Bowie after someone like Frank Zappa.

“Frank’s work, for me, was life lessons – how to be in the music business, be a professional touring musician and travel around the world. Maybe even, you know, make records or films; we did both of those.

“It was how to how to run your own business – so many things that weren’t really related to the notes and the sound. But of course, learning five hours of Frank Zappa material was a 24/7 job for me the whole time!

“I was catching up because I was the only one in the band who didn't read music. Frank wanted you to play his music correctly and consistently. He wasn’t really there for you to say, ‘Hey, I’d like to try this. How about that?’

“That was not Frank’s way. He had everything the way he wanted, and he needed people to play it right, be on time, and not come in half-drunk or any of those stupid things.”

How did working with Zappa prepare you for what was to come with Bowie?

“It was a school and I graduated from it. Before that point no one had really shown me anything – not even how to play guitar. I worked things out myself. To have someone of Frank’s stature, his genius, telling me what to do and showing me the ropes, was more important than even being in the band. It was incredible tutoring.”

“David wanted someone to just go wild on guitar. That’s what he needed; Frank didn’t need that from me. He needed me to sing a lot and play his parts. David needed me to grow wings and fly away. And he encouraged that all the time.

“You can see in some of the videos that, while I’m taking a solo, David’s standing with his arms crossed and beaming like a Cheshire cat because he just loves it. He loved to hear people go wild like that.

“And it fit in with what he was doing: David’s music was always strangely mainstream and yet really off-the-wall, especially during that period.”

I imagine your previous experience of working things out on your own lent itself to going off the wall with him. 

“Absolutely. I was ready to go. I didn’t have a lot of titles or sounds to choose from, but I was able to combine them in different ways with some of the hand techniques I was using, like bending the neck and crazy things like that.

“It all came across as kind of a new picture; I don’t think anyone had heard or seen that. It was another thing David loved – he wanted somebody that could kind of match his stage thing, not just another player standing up there playing their instrument.”

Did your gear change much as you transitioned from Zappa to Bowie?

“Oh, yeah – everything changed. When I was with Frank, I had just come from nowhere; I had no equipment to speak of. I auditioned for Frank through a little Pignose [battery-powered] amp. But by the time I got to David, I had discovered a the Roland Jazz Chorus [JC-120], and that became my amp.

“That really changed things. It was a completely different way of playing guitar. Strangely, it’s solid-state, very clean, and Japanese-sounding. But there were other things you could do – you could warm it up and pair it with some of the Electro-Harmonix pedals.

“One day I realized that if I walked over in front of the Roland Jazz Chorus, a Stereo Chorus amp, I could suddenly point the guitar at the front of the amp and move it around, and it would make this incredible oscillating sound.

“I could take the chorus setting and move it back and forth between that and vibrato and so forth. It’s a sound you cannot possibly get – no pedal in the world will make it. It’s a natural occurrence between two speakers being in chorus together. I used that a lot of early records.”

How did you take the rig you used with Bowie and push it forward with King Crimson?

“The main thing that changed from that first period from David to Talking Heads to King Crimson was that I went to Japan. I met the people at Roland and they said, ‘We have a new thing – a guitar synthesizer.’ I’d been dying to have something akin to what keyboard players could do for 10 years, and they gave me one.”

You were one of the earliest adopters of the guitar synth, right?

“I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure I had the first one in New York, as they weren’t available there yet. When I joined King Crimson, Robert had a Roland JC-120 and also the synthesizer; it was actually the second one they made, but it was the first one that anyone ever used.

“The first one has been a bit too much – it was like a big Farfisa organ. The second one is the blue one, the GR-300. So much of the King Crimson sound of the ‘80s came from that one device.

“It was a simple instrument: you could only do maybe five or six things with it, and you had to manually tune all the different oscillators. You couldn’t save a sound! It was the era before things got much more digitized.”

You’re primarily known as a Strat guy, so the guitar synth must have been a shock to the system.

“Even if you just put it with the guitar, you had a very unusual sound. The guitar didn’t sound like a normal guitar and that really changed things. So the next thing I did in that period was my first solo record, Lone Rhino, using all the things I had coming from David, Talking Heads and King Crimson.”

What was that setup like?

“The Strat and maybe four, five or six little pedals. But for Twang Bar King, the second solo record, I started using the guitar synth. I had Fender build me a Mustang with all the accoutrements from the guitar synthesizer.

“You had all kinds of things you could operate from the guitar, and you had to have a special pickup. Once that got designed, I started using what became known as the ‘Twang Bar King guitar’ because I made that record with it. I used that in King Crimson from there on.”

You’d matched wits with Zappa, Bowie, Eno and David Byrne – a lot of interesting characters. What was it like working alongside Fripp?

“The first thing with Robert was that he’d already designed the kind of guitar playing he favored – fast picking; very, very precise. He needed a second guitar player to play it. It required two people playing the same thing, offsetting from each other. Frame by Frame is a great example of it.

“Robert and I sat down for hours every day; I had to get up to speed with being able to play like him. After we got to a certain point, and I was getting good enough to do it – because it wasn’t my style at all, and I’m not the best picker in the world – and Robert was feeling good about it, I started trying to write songs with it.

“Then it was, ‘Okay, get back to your Stratocaster and start making your sounds like an elephant!’ It really came to the point where Robert and I had separated into our own worlds. I always said it was two sides of the same coin: Robert has his approach, and I had my approach of making those sounds, noises, feedback, and bird calls.”

Fripp named the Beat project – is that right?

“Yes – in brief, I’d been working on the idea of putting together a band to do those three records – Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair – the ‘80s trilogy. I talked to Robert in 2019 and he declined being any part of it. But he said, ‘If you want to celebrate King Crimson and you want to drive it, go ahead. I will give you my blessing.’”

How did Steve Vai become involved?

“We started thinking, ‘Well, who could possibly be in the band?’ The big part would be, ‘Who would step into Robert’s role?’ The only person I could think of was Steve. I heard him say in an interview that he had a lot of affection and admiration for Robert.

“So I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s a chance – you never know.’ I called him, and lo and behold, he was so excited; I couldn’t believe it. So we started talking… and then, of course, COVID hit. That added another two and a half years onto the waiting process.

“I wasn’t sure Steve would ever be able to do it because, after COVID, he had 18 months of touring commitments that he’d previously booked. We had to keep waiting. By the time we thought, ‘Okay, let’s call Steve now,’ he was ready to do it; he thought he could fit it into his busy schedule.”

Is that when you approached Tony Levin and Danny Carey?

“Yes. Tony had been in King Crimson, but I didn't think we were ever going to get him. But his schedule opened and he was delighted to do it – he said, ‘It would be a big challenge!’ But he accepts that kind of thing. He thrives on it.

“I thought, ‘Wow, we are one person away from having the kind of elite musicians that could do this.’ I didn’t want to have a band that didn’t do it as well as it could possibly be done. You had to have people of that caliber. And then Danny Carey came into the picture. 

“I’ve known Danny for many years; he’s always talked so much about Bill Bruford and those three records. He said that when he first started drumming, those were the things he listened to and was inspired by.

“So I knew he was a huge fan of that music. The same thing happened – the Tool tour was about to end and they were going into writing mode and didn’t know how long that would take. So yes, Danny wanted to go off for a few months with us.”

How will you and Steve approach the gig?

“We got together in L.A. after we had all that stuff in place. He and I sat down in his studio full of gorgeous stuff – like 400 guitars – and we sat there for a whole day ticking through. We listened to all the songs I had decided we should do; although I’m still considering things. I’m going to have that done in a few days.

“We had a book with all the material transcribed for guitar – my parts and Robert’s, except my solos. They say in the book that there’s no way they can tell you how to play my solos. And that’s true because I can’t either!

“I think it really relieved Steve a lot because he wants to make sure that what we do is honorable to the originals. Not that we have to play them exactly the same, and not that we're going to be a cover band. We certainly will not be over time; I believe we will make it our own. 

“But there are many well-defined elements in King Crimson’s music that have to be there. Steve was concerned about those things, and after we went through it, and I told him the things I thought we could branch out from, he felt a lot more relieved.”

What’s the key to locking in with Steve, seeing as you’re both going to need a lot of space?

“We don’t know – we have yet to play a note! I suspect Steve and I will end up being the same as Robert and me. A different version of it, of course, but two sides of the same coin.

“I’m anxious to hear what he’ll come up with – which won’t be just him playing Robert’s parts. But Robert’s parts are fantastic, and they will need to be there. Once we’ve had some rehearsals, I’ll tell you how it’s going. Until then, I’m guessing.”

• Beat commence their tour on September 12. See Beat Tour for full dates.

The definitive track from Three of a Perfect Pair, King Crimson’s underrated 10th LP, could be its deepest cut: Dig Me is three minutes of atonal avant-rock chaos interspersed with gleaming New Wave choruses – a combo that crystalizes the prog quartet’s evolved form by 1984. 

“I went into the studio one day and said, ‘[This piece] is going to be no set tempo or rhythms – very disconnected,’” says singer-guitarist Adrian Belew, describing an early session in England. “It was our way of combining this industrial approach with an actual song.”

It’s a microcosm of Perfect Pair itself, the summit of what guitarist and Crimson torch-carrier Robert Fripp had mapped out, creatively, as the “incline to 1984.”

“When we started, Robert had a kind of plan laid out that we would do three records in three years,” Belew says, describing the fertile period that also birthed 1981’s Discipline and 1982’s Beat. But this third installment of the ’80s trilogy was more experimental and more melodic, with each sonic mode occupying its own half of a vinyl LP. 

Belew says he and Fripp outlined most of the basic frameworks together, playing “quietly with our two electric guitars unplugged.” And even though he’d recently exhausted a mountain of ideas on his first two solo LPs, Belew still managed to polish off Perfect Pair’s more radio-friendly cuts, including the shadowy Sleepless; some of the more untamed tunes, like Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (Part III), remained instrumental.

The final product is essentially two EPs smashed together – a unique bit of sequencing that gives the album its own quirky character. 

Belew muses that the hooky Man with an Open Heart, for example, would sound “really out of place” surrounded by “this muscular, crazy, wonderful stuff” from side two – in “this industrial musical junkyard we created.” 

Still, there were strange sonic secrets lurking within even the catchiness, including Three of a Perfect Pair, which mingles interlocking guitars and complex time signatures with a blues-like three-chord structure and backing vocals that – no joke – were inspired by Motown.

“When I got to the chorus – and I know this is going to sound crazy – I thought I’d write something like the Supremes might have sung,” Belew says with a laugh, recreating the refrain. “But, of course, with it turning out to be in 7, it’s not exactly a Supremes song, is it?”

Steve Vai has singled out channeling Robert Fripp’s “relentlessness” and unique picking style as some of the biggest challenges as he prepares to play the King Crimson legend's material on tour later this year. 

He’s also revealed he’s working with Roland to make three special guitars for the upcoming shows. 

Vai has teamed up with King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, and Tool drummer Danny Carey for the Beat supergroup. The band will be playing tracks from King Crimson’s trio of ‘80s albums, Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect during their US tour in the fall. 

The band had previously received Fripp’s blessing, who said Vai was the only guitarist “who could play my parts”. Now, Vai has opened up on the parts he’s finding the most difficult to nail.  

Guesting on the Make Weird Music podcast, Vai said: “There are songs that the particular picking technique makes it a little challenging. 

“Like, Frame By Frame – I mean, back before the shoulder surgery and everything, that would have been no problem at all. It's the endurance, it's the absolute relentlessness of what he does that makes it so difficult. Because it's constant and it's intense. And it's fantastic.” 

Having called Fripp a “historical genius”, Vai revealed he has begun developing a hybrid picking technique that's halfway between Fripp’s relentless attack and his own style.  

“My original style was not very far off, but it went through a vast change when I joined Alcatrazz,” he explains. “I used to pick over the neck for all that Zappa stuff, but the tone wasn't very good. 

“His style is so specific and refined, it's not something I could just jump into,” Vai continues. “It's a study. I've still got a few months. It's coming along. Robert's been extremely helpful, we've been in contact a lot.”

Having also received help from Belew, who assured Vai he had permission to change things up a bit, he’s said that Elephant Talk is one song that will be Vai-ified. 

Vai goes on: “There are a couple of things that are a little difficult. Elephant Talk is a peculiar kind of thing. Plus, this isn't a cover band, we're reinterpreting some things. My style and sound will flow into it, because it will be coming out of me. 

“I'm trying my absolute best to respect every note that Robert wrote, it's just how I perform it might be a little different.”

Another song in Vai’s crosshairs is Thela Hun Ginjeet. 

“I want to add a little Vai into it,” he reveals. “Robert said, ‘I wanna see Steve Vai. If I was sitting in the audience, I'd wanna see Steve Vai go crazy.’ I'm doing it more rhythmically and leaving out one note – I could get it in there but it's awkward. I like it because it's more me.”  

When asked about the gear he’ll be using for the tour, the guitarist revealed he is “having three guitars built for this tour”, in collaboration with Roland. 

“They're gonna have the Roland GM-800 [guitar synth] built into them,” Vai continues. “I'm working with Roland and I sent them the tracks and pinpointed certain parts so we can start with a facsimile of Robert’s sound. 

“But I don't want to do everything the way he did it. I want to see if there's different ways of making those sounds with new technology that work on a contemporary guitar. All the stuff they used is discontinued. 

“I'm very optimistic. I've fooled around with synth guitars, but I just want simplicity and quality. And I can't wait to start building these patches.” 

Beat's maiden tour kicks off September 12 in San Jose and runs through to November 8, when it wraps in Las Vegas.  

For tickets and more info, visit the band's website.

In a recent interview on Rob Squad and the Creators, King Crimson's Robert Fripp has recounted the band's early years – including a memorable encounter with Jimi Hendrix.

Fripp allegedly met Hendrix in 1969 at London's Revolution's Club, a meeting he frequently refers to as “one of the best calling cards any working musician is ever likely to be able to present.”

“This is the hand shaken by the hand of Jimi Hendrix,” he said. “He came to see the band and... was apparently upstairs saying, this is the best band in the world. And he came down to see us, and he came up to me and said, ‘Shake my left hand, man, it's closer to my heart.'”

When talking about the 1981 King Crimson album Discipline, Fripp said that “the band met and wrote all the material in three weeks. We took it on the road in Europe for three weeks, and then we recorded it in three weeks.”

In addition, he said that he plays around “nine notes per second in the fast parts” of the track Frame by Frame. His wife, the singer and actress Toyah Willcox was also part of the interview and alluded to Fripp's dedication to his craft:

“As someone who has listened to Robert play for 38 years within our house, the intensity of the fingers and the speed of the fingers and sometimes Robert's playing 11 notes a second. He practices for four hours a day. Sometimes it can be hell. Other times, it's an absolute inspiration because he can do it for a long time.”

Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox have a busy festival season performing under the moniker Toyah & Robert. They'll be playing the Avalon Stage at this year's Glastonbury and will also perform at the Isle of Wight Festival. This will be followed by a tour in December, which kicks off at Queens Hall in Edinburgh on December 16.

The pair went viral over the pandemic with their weekly Sunday Lunch video series. Fripp spoke to Guitar World last year, revealing how he ended up covering – and loving – the likes of Megadeth, Metallica and Slipknot.

Meanwhile, new King Crimson supergroup Beat – which counts Adrian Belew and Steve Vai among its lineup – will be touring the prog icons' '80s material later this year.

The term ‘supergroup’ is often overused – but in the case of Beat, that moniker can be used with full confidence.

Featuring Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, and Tool’s Danny Carey, the band has been assembled with Robert Fripp’s blessing to perform King Crimson’s ‘80s trilogy of albums: Discipline (1981), Beat (1982), and Three of a Perfect Pair (1984).

In an upcoming interview with Guitar World, Belew sat down to dish out the project’s details – and tease what fans can expect from his new guitar partnership with Vai ahead of Beat's extensive US tour.

“I had been working on the idea of putting together a band to do the '80s trilogy,” he explains of Beat's origins. “I talked to Robert in 2019. He declined being any part of it, but he said to me, 'If you want to celebrate King Crimson, and you want to drive it, go ahead. I will give you my blessing.'” 

This left Belew scratching his head for a suitable electric guitar stand-in – and only one name came to mind. 

He continues, “We started thinking, 'Well, who could possibly be in the band?...Who would step into Robert's role?' The only person I could think of was Steve Vai.

“I heard Steve Vai say in an interview that he had a lot of affection for Robert Fripp's playing, especially the '80s Crimson. So, I thought, 'Well, maybe there's a chance.' Lo and behold, he was so excited; I couldn't believe it.”

After Vai was locked in (and COVID had delayed the project by three years), Belew turned to fellow King Crimson alumni Tony Levin, and Tool's Danny Carey, to complete the lineup.

With the band formed, there was just the tricky part of piecing the music together. For Vai and Belew, that meant developing a guitar-playing relationship that could live up to Fripp/Belew double-act.

To do that, the two Beat bandmates hunkered down and Vai's LA studio and began the process of going through the King Crimson catalog.

“Steve and I got together in LA, and I went to his studio full of gorgeous stuff, like 400 guitars, and we sat there for a whole day ticking through,” Belew recalls. “We listened to all the songs I had decided we should do, which was a partial setlist.

“We went one by one through them, saying, 'Okay, here's what you can hear, here's what Robert's doing there, here's what I'm doing here.' We also had a book with all that material transcribed for guitar, my parts, and Robert's, except my solos.”

As for what fans can expect from the Vai/Belew partnership, the guitarist acknowledged it will be different from the relationship he shared with Fripp, but asserted there will be some certain sonic similarities.

“It really came to the point where Robert and I had separated into our own worlds,” he concludes. ”But I always said the perfect analogy was like two sides of the same coin. Because Robert has his approach, and I had my approach.

“I suspect Steve and I will end up being the same as Robert and me – a different version of it, of course, but two sides of the same coin. 

“Steve wants to make sure that what we do is honorable to the originals,” Belew expands. “Not that we have to play them exactly the same and not that we're going to be a cover band, I believe we will make it our own.”

Keep an eye on GuitarWorld.com to catch the full interview with Adrian Belew.

Last month, it was revealed that Steve Vai would be joining King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, as well as Tool’s Danny Carey, for Beat – a forthcoming tour that will see the four musicians play the music of three iconic King Crimson albums.

Now, official details of the supergroup’s upcoming tour have been announced, with Vai and co set to play an extensive tour across North America, during which they will revisit and reinterpret tracks from the Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair albums.

The tour will begin on September 12 at the San Jose Civic in California, and is currently scheduled to conclude on November 8 at Las Vegas’ The Theater at Virgin Hotels. Between those two dates, the group will embark on a mammoth run of 40 near-consecutive nights of shows.

Vai – whose 2024 touring schedule has already included the G3 reunion and Satch/Vai tour – said of the tour: “Being a part of this ensemble is an extraordinary privilege and opportunity to perform some of the most beloved, timeless, and monumental music of the 80’s (and beyond) with truly inspired musicians. 

“This music resonates deeply with me. Adrian, Tony and Danny are unique musicians with an otherworldly insight into presenting rich musical complexities in a very accessible way, and I am looking forward to searching each other’s musical minds in real time on stage. I’m sure sparks will fly.

“Father Robert Fripp is one of our historical geniuses,” he continued. “His highly specific and exceptionally brilliant guitar technique is studied and revered. His contribution to the quality of my musical life, and so many others is supreme. 

“I can assure the fans of KC that I will be putting my best foot forward to respect this great music with the care and intensity it deserves.”

Vai has already received the blessing of King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, who voiced his support for the group in a series of Facebook posts. In one, he called Vai “the only guitarist who could play my parts.”

“This is music to be played, engaged, re-imagined, heard anew, chewed up and digested,” he said in another post. “I'm totally psyched for this.”

For Beat, Vai will be sharing guitar duties with Belew, who explained the purpose of the project: to shine a new light on King Crimson’s ‘80s-era material.

“The 1981 through 1984 King Crimson created a music all its own,” he noted. “Timeless. Beautiful. Complex. Fierce. For the fans who lived through it then, and the ones who never got to witness it, our aim is to bring it to life again. A monumental task, but we're going for it.”

You can see a full list of dates below. For tickets and more info, visit the band's website.

Beat Tour 2024 Dates

9/12     San Jose, CA                           San Jose Civic

9/13     Napa, CA                                Blue Note Napa Summer Sessions at Meritage Resort

9/14     Los Angeles, CA                    The United Theater on Broadway

9/15     Anaheim, CA                          City National Grove of Anaheim

9/17     San Diego, CA                        Humphrey’s Concerts

9/18     Phoenix, AZ                            Celebrity Theatre

9/20     Austin, TX                              The Paramount Theatre

9/21     Houston, TX                           Bayou Music Centre

9/22     Dallas, TX                              Majestic Theatre

9/24     Atlanta, GA                            The Eastern

9/26     Fort Lauderdale, FL                The Parker

9/27     Orlando, FL                            Hard Rock Live

9/28     Clearwater, FL                        Ruth Eckerd Hall

9/29     Charleston, SC                        Charleston Music Hall

10/01   Charlotte, NC                          Knight Theater

10/02   Durham, NC                           Carolina Theatre of Durham / Fletcher Hall

10/04   Washington, DC                     Warner Theatre

10/05   New York, NY                       Beacon Theatre

10/06   Glenside, PA                           Keswick Theatre

10/08   Richmond, VA                        Carpenter Theater in Dominion Energy Center

10/09   Red Bank, NJ                          Count Basie Center

10/11   Boston, MA                            Shubert Theatre

10/12   Hampton Beach, NH              Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom

10/14   Halifax, NS                             Rebecca Cohen Auditorium

10/15   Moncton, NB                          Casino New Brunswick

10/17   Montreal, QC                          Theatre Maisonneuve

10/18   Toronto, ON                           Massey Hall

10/19   Rochester, NY                        Kodak Center

10/21   Albany, NY                            The Egg

10/22   Greensburg, PA                      Palace Theatre

10/23   Reading, PA                            Santander Performing Arts Center

10/25   Cleveland, OH                        Agora Theatre

10/26   Cincinnati, OH                        Taft Theatre

10/27   Royal Oak, MI                        Royal Oak Music Theatre

10/28   Nashville, TN                         Ryman Auditorium

10/30   Indianapolis, IN                      Murat Theatre

11/01   Chicago, IL                             Copernicus Center

11/02   Milwaukee, WI                       Pabst Theatre

11/03   Madison, WI                           Orpheum Theater

11/04   Minneapolis, MN                    State Theatre

11/06   Denver, CO                             Paramount Theatre

11/08   Las Vegas, NV                       The Theater at Virgin Hotels

Lots of guitar nerds would consider Adrian Belew a virtuoso, and it’s hard to argue against them. But he’s really a virtuoso of sound and form more than show-off technique. 

As a one-time member of prog rock institution King Crimson, a solo artist balancing Beatles-like ear worms and outré studio craft, and an A-list hired gun for legends like Talking Heads, Frank Zappa and David Bowie, he’s created his own language on the guitar. Literally no-one else could sound like him if they wanted to – partly because his skill set is so distinctive, partly because he approaches effects pedals like a painter would colors. 

For Belew, head-turning gigs begat head-turning gigs in the late Seventies and early Eighties: In a legendary three-year studio streak (not even mentioning his stage work), he appeared on Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti, David Bowie’s Stage and Lodger and Talking Heads’ Remain in Light – solidifying his joyously wacky approach to sound design and an aggressive rhythmic energy that drew on his background as a drummer. 

In the reformed Crimson, he teamed with bandmate Robert Fripp to create a startling guitar style drawing, at various points, from the glow of New Wave, the bombastic snarl of metal, and the interlocking principles of gamelan. And he’s continued to innovate with each band, album, and one-off collaboration. 

The beauty – and irony – of Belew is that his sound is in constant flux, but few guitarists are so easily identifiable. No list could even scratch the surface, but below we round up 10 of his definitive guitar moments. 

10. Young Lions – (Adrian Belew, from 1990’s Young Lions) 

Belew’s fifth solo album is a bit of a grab-bag, source-wise – compiling covers of The Traveling Wilburys (Not Alone Anymore) and, technically, himself (King Crimson’s Heartbeat); two link-ups with Bowie (Pretty Pink Rose and Gunman); and a track that samples radio evangelist Prophet Omega (I Am What I Am). 

You’d think the vibe would be chaotic, but Young Lions could be his most consistently melodic work, kicking off with the sharpest pop song in his catalog, the chugging title track. 

The primary guitar part is more subtle and funky than Crimson fans may have expected, showcasing his knack for Beatles-y chord changes. But there’s also some good old-fashioned Belew animal noises (elephants and lions, at the very least), matching the mood of this “hot tribal night.”

9. This Is What I Believe In – (Adrian Belew, from 1992’s Inner Revolution)

Belew opens this introspective rocker, a sort of bluesier cousin of King Crimson’s Neal and Jack and Me, with several sweetly sung sentiments: “Hold tight to your faith / Don’t let nobody make you jaded / Your love is precious / Give it to somebody who deserves it / This is what I believe in / Hold tight to yourself / Don’t let nobody give you hell.” 

But the song grows darker as it grinds on, with Belew warning of a “dangerous,” cannibalistic world “full of homicidals and terrorists.” Still, by the song’s conclusion, you’re left with a warm sense of optimism – urged on by some of his most colorful guitar work, including an instrumental bridge full of violin-like churning and a solo that recalls the soulfulness of Stevie Wonder’s harmonica.

8. The Momur – (Adrian Belew, from 1982’s Lone Rhino) 

Falling somewhere between palm-muted power-pop and ragged New Wave punk, The Momur is Belew at peak silliness. Between swarming feedback, atonal fills, and an impressively sustained solo, the guitarist channels the absurdity of Zappa, sharing a B-movie-type tale his old pal and musical mentor might have appreciated. 

Here’s the plot: The previous night, the protagonist’s wife turned into a monster, backed him into a corner, tried to kill him with a broom (seems difficult, doesn’t it?), smashed his favorite guitar, and even danced on the wreckage. (The seemingly random title was a family joke: Belew’s daughter Audie, then only three, used to babble the word “momur” instead of “monster” when she got scared by something.) 

“It’s from back in the day when I was still trying to be funny in my songs, which came from my work with Frank Zappa,” Belew explained to Innerviews in 2022. But that tip of the cap seems to extend even beyond the words – musically, it’s easy to picture The Momur as part of a late-Seventies Zappa album like Sheik Yerbouti.

7. Tango Zebra – (Adrian Belew, from 1986’s Desire Caught by the Tail) 

On a purely tonal level, Belew is probably best known for being animalistic. Literally – he once displayed his gift for beastly mimicry during a Japanese TV commercial, accurately channeling chickens, cats and elephants. 

But his guitars, when prompted, can also speak the language of other instruments, as showcased through the experimental folk orchestrations of Tango Zebra. It’s a journey song of the highest magnitude, opening with the twang of resonators and gradually growing more synthetic – the result lands somewhere between jazz, bluegrass and avant-rock. 

It’s unlike anything else in his catalog, not least because of the unique arrangement, inspired partly by George Gershwin. “[T]hat’s how I approached it,” Belew told Music Technology in 1987, “as though there really were members in this orchestra and I had to produce for their instruments.” The most blatantly orchestral touch: a section of electric guitars that sound uncannily like woodwinds. Except that they don’t quite – like basically every other Belew tone, it sounds uniquely his.

6. e2 – (Adrian Belew, from 2009’s e) 

By the late 2000s, Belew had collaborated with the elite of prog and art-rock – he could pretty much record with anyone, forming whatever outlandish supergroup he pleased. 

Most people in this exalted position wouldn’t start a brand new band from scratch – in this case, the Adrian Belew Power Trio – with a pair of relatively unknown young adults. But brother-sister rhythm section Julie Slick (bass) and Eric Slick (drums) brought a renewed vitality and edge to Belew’s music, best displayed on a knotty five-part suite dubbed e. 

It would be cheating to pick the full, 42-minute piece (the swaggering live favorite b deserves an honorable mention), so let’s turn to the eight-minute finale, e2, in which Belew unfurls chromatic runs and unnerving harmonies over Julie’s staccato bass riffs. As with many of his tunes, this one takes on a new intensity in concert, as Belew builds mountains of overdubs with a looper pedal.

5. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) – (Talking Heads, from 1980’s Remain in Light)

Talking Heads didn’t exactly need any guest players on their fourth LP – and they certainly didn’t need a gravity-bending show-stopper like Belew on the densely arranged funk-rock opener, Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On). 

The song is stuffed to the gills with overdubs, as electronic bloops, bass riffs, and backing vocals pile into a polyrhythmic groove that borrows its all-hands-on-deck heft from African music. And that’s before even mentioning Heads frontman David Byrne, whose raving lands somewhere between cryptic paranoia and plain gibberish (“Take a look at these hands / The hand speaks, the hand of a government man / Well, I’m a tumbler / Born under punches / I’m so thin”). 

In summary, there’s already a lot to unpack. But then Belew, who’d later join the band on the Remain in Light tour, added a magic dash of secret sauce: a long stretch of guitar playing that sounds like an ancient, defective modem booting up on an alien planet. 

“I recorded a guitar solo and then ran it through an expensive piece of studio gear called a Lexicon Prime Time,” Belew wrote on Facebook, “which allowed me to alter the [bandwidth] of the sound while capturing quick little loops I could fool with.”

4. Three of a Perfect Pair – (King Crimson, from 1984’s Three of a Perfect Pair) 

Throughout the Eighties, King Crimson invented their own language within progressive rock – their best songs were both snappy and strange. 

By the time the classic quartet lineup reached Three of a Perfect Pair, their last of an early-decade trilogy, those extreme sensibilities seemed to be diverging: “The album presents two distinct sides of the band’s personality, which has caused at least as much confusion for the group as it has the public and the industry,” Fripp wrote in the album’s press release. “The left side is accessible, the right side excessive.” 

Kicking off the former half is the classic title track, which is – let’s be honest – still pretty damn unorthodox for any band not named King Crimson. Belew and Fripp revive their now-standard interlocking guitars for the verses, grounded by the polyrhythmic force of bassist Tony Levin’s jumpy low-end and Bill Bruford’s restrained acoustic drumming. 

It’s already a highlight of their entire Eighties run, but that’s before you dig into Belew’s sputtering guitar-synth solo, assembled, like Born Under Punches, through studio doctoring with the Lexicon Prime Time.

3. Level Five – (King Crimson, from 2003’s The Power to Believe) 

During a run of dates with heavy prog masters (and King Crimson disciplines) Tool way back in 2001, the prog legends road-tested fresh material that wound up on their 13th and final studio album, The Power to Believe.

Tool’s influence seemingly rubbed off: The music is darker and more metallic than anything Crimson had released since 1974’s Red. (The album’s working title was, fittingly, Nuovo Metal.) There’s no better example than opener Level Five, a piece almost frightening in its attack. 

The track, originally described as the fifth installment of their Larks Tongues in Aspic series, offers plenty of fireworks from both Belew and Fripp, as both players react to the sputtering, glitchy electro-acoustic drumming of Pat Mastelotto. But Belew’s MVP moment arrives after the five-minute mark, when he breaks into a torrent of high-octave squeals and dazzling dives.  

2. Frame by Frame – (King Crimson, from 1981’s Discipline) 

If Elephant Talk is the playful centerpiece of Discipline, Frame by Frame is the album’s serious, beard-stroking prog moment – the yin to that song’s yang. (Ironically, the lyrics originated from a sort of in-joke between Belew and Levin, the band’s other American member, about the analytical side of their studious British bandmates.) 

The track is quintessential Eighties Crim, built around a complex twin-guitar pattern in 78 that drifts apart before locking back into place. 

But even if Fripp and Belew could meld into each other’s styles, they never tried to hide their differences: Frame by Frame opens with a disorienting instrumental section with the two playing off each other brilliantly – Fripp overcome in a flurry of rapid-fire picking, Belew strangling his strings into chunky rhythms and whammy bar wildness. (To fully appreciate the latter’s work on this behemoth, check out the live version from the Neal and Jack and Me concert DVD.)

1. Elephant Talk – (King Crimson, from 1981’s Discipline)

It may be the obvious choice, of course, but… come on! Elephant Talk has everything you could possibly want from Belew: the elite musicianship, the raw creativity, the sense of child-like wonder, the boatload of guitar effects. (The one thing it doesn’t feature is the man’s underrated singing – this one’s basically spoken.) 

The song bloomed from a funky guitar riff that Belew eventually suggested that Levin refine on his Chapman Stick – and from there, the former was free to go nuts with the pedals. It’s a tour de force: woozy dives, static-wrapped rhythms, harmonic pings and, most crucially, a flange-and-fuzz combo that sounds unmistakably like the roar of a freaking elephant. 

Belew’s lyrics add another layer of gleeful mania, moving alphabetically to list the various kinds of human speech. (Best part: “These are words with a ‘d’ this time!”) Since the words didn’t rhyme, he felt no need to sing in the traditional sense, instead leaning into a bizarre holler. Luckily he made it up to the letter “E,” allowing him to connect the dots between elephant sounds and, well, whatever it was Elephant Talk actually meant. 

Because Steve Vai clearly doesn’t have enough projects to keep his fretboard-bothering fingers busy, he’s joined a new King Crimson-honoring supergroup, Beat. 

It sees him join forces with King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, and Tool’s rhythmic tour de force Danny Carey. With the blessing of Robert Fripp, the band will perform tracks from King Crimson’s trio of ‘80s LPs, Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair.

Writing on Facebook, the King Crimson guitarist detailed the background to the band’s formation, saying: “This is the project that Adrian Belew called me about last Autumn, a project which I support and fully encourage, and discussed with Steve Vai recently... Even, I suggested the name.”

In a separate statement, Fripp added, “Steve Vai asked me what I thought when Adrian Belew told me Steve would be the guitarist. My reply: Steve Vai is the only guitarist who could play my parts.”

Via a third Facebook post, Fripp hyped the band, revealing he is excited by the prospect of the four distinguished musicians re-energizing Crimson’s music. 

“This is music to be played, engaged, re-imagined, heard anew, chewed up and digested,” he said. “I'm totally psyched for this.”

Details of Beat’s plans are scarce, save for one confirmed show at Humphrey’s Concerts By The Bay in San Diego on 17 September.

The show adds to Vai’s tireless 2024 touring schedule, which started off with the reunion of the classic G3 line-up and also includes a co-headline tour with Joe Satriani in the US.  

It seems unlikely that Beat will be just a one-show-wonder, so keep your eyes on these pages for further details in the future. 

Beat may have plenty in the pipeline, but King Crimson’s future is a somewhat clouded. Speaking to Guitar World previously, Fripp has admitted that it’s “hard to say” what the future holds for the progressive rock giants.

In other news, another former King Crimson man, Trey Gunn, recently championed Fripp’s impact on his guitar playing. He says he “helped create almost a new genre” with each King Crimson song the pair worked on.

Best known for brandishing a Warr Guitar as a member of King Crimson from 1993 to 2003, Trey Gunn has stretched the bounds of instrumentation beyond the confines of six strings.

It’s not that he’s bored by standard guitars – it’s more that his mindset and muse drive him to dive headfirst into the obtuse. “I don’t know when it was, but at some point, I realized how different the Warr Guitar was, and that got me thinking about how challenging it was going to be,” he says.

“Once my wrists and elbow pain started from holding it traditionally, I laid it horizontally across my lap; I had to think about it even more differently. It can be hard to explain, but for me, the Warr Guitar is like 10 different instruments next to each other – and sometimes just one string is enough to do plenty of things.”

That sort of thinking has Gunn at it again, this time alongside King Crimson alum Pat Mastelotto, who partnered with Gunn on Tu-Ner. As has long been the case, Tu-Ner is brimming with Warr Guitar, and off-the-beaten-path sounds that only a player like Gunn could come up with.

“I’m always thinking about the whole octave of a string or even two octaves of a string,” he explains. “With the Tu-Ner record – which I’d say was like 98 percent improvised – I’d take maybe a weird, synthesized sound, look at the range of the Warr Guitar, or maybe just two strings, stick with it, and improvise with those sounds.”

Of course, he’s no stranger to improvisation, having played alongside the king of the field, Robert Fripp. “We all have what I’d call musical language influences and with those come strategies and attitudes,” Gunn says. “And there’s no denying that Robert influenced me in all those ways.”

“King Crimson operates within a very specialized language, which evolved throughout the different incarnations of the band. I feel like I helped create almost a new genre with King Crimson with each piece of music we made.

“The process with Robert was so intense, and if you’re not grabbing musical vocabulary off the shelf and assembling it for your purpose, you’re missing out.”

Your trademark has long been the Warr Guitar. How would you describe the instrument?

“The Warr Guitar is within the family of touch instruments, which are exclusively made for tapping, although you can do other things. My use of it grew out of me playing the Chapman Stick back in the ‘80s, which is also used for tapping and, like the Warr Guitar, has bass and guitar strings.”

What led to you favoring the Warr Guitar over the Chapman Stick?

“I met Mark Warr, who makes and builds these instruments for me, and I've been playing them ever since. It was after we finished King Crimson’s THRAK – I used it from there.”

Did you take to it immediately, as you did with the Stick?

“Yes. It has a group of bass and guitar strings, and I tune it like a cello, which opened a whole universe for me that wasn’t there with a regular guitar.

“The way I traditionally played it – which is funny since the instrument is only 30 years old – was having it hang down like a regular guitar. But it was destructive on my wrists and elbows.

“Another side story is that I wanted to have two instruments simultaneously with King Crimson – a fretted and fretless. So I put one of them on a stand, and that’s how I grew into playing the Warr Guitar horizontally, tapping it with the wrists and the arms held more like a piano style. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s infinitely better.”

Comfort aside, did your approach change when you began playing horizontally? 

“The biggest thing is there are two angles to this instrument. Remember I don’t play it as a guitarist does – I don't think about positions. What’s weird about this instrument, and the general category of touch guitars, is that it looks like a guitar, has guitar strings, and you can play it like a guitar. But it's very different.

“If you play it in terms of positions and reach your fingers out from those positions, you’ll have crappy technique. Eventually, you’ll destroy your hands because the tapping won’t be efficient. 

“I smoothly move my hands up and down the neck so I’m never stuck. I’m not thinking about the length of the string horizontally across the neck, or the group of strings; I'm always thinking longitudinally.”

And how has your mindset evolved since your days in King Crimson?

“The first thing is that I can hear much more. I don’t know if my playing is any better than when I was with King Crimson, but I can hear more overall. I’m more specific about what notes and rhythms are present. And I’m also more mindful about where the music wants to go – it tends to evolve a lot more.

“The hardest thing to do is listen to music I’ve been involved with in the past because I often feel like I wasn’t hearing things as I do now. I wish I could have heard music the way I do now back then; it would have been different. 

“So that’s the biggest thing: I hear all the possibilities within a musical idea rather than being wrapped up in the sheer playing.”

Did Robert Fripp influence your approach to the Warr Guitar much?

“When you work with someone like Robert, they can’t help but rub off on you. We’d work on things sometimes where we’d have a little idea that we’d be kicking around for years and years and years.

“And when I say a little idea, it could be just two bars, a chord sequence, or a way of approaching chords. Then we’d take those building blocks and internalize them enough to speak with them.”

So some of the vocabulary from your King Crimson days lives on within your music today, then?

“I think so. The trick to making new vocabulary is you can’t just grab it and make sense of it right away, you know? You’ve got to digest it and be able to speak with it.

“Robert and I would explore these things for years before they would make it into a piece of music. And that approach is something that’s still part of me.

“For example, in my solo work, I’m looking at the purpose of arpeggios and the variables I could have in an arpeggio that’s not normal, basically comes out of left field or has yet to be used. That kind of sonic exploration is something that Robert is great at and it definitely rubbed off on me.”

Outside of the Warr Guitar, has any kit caught your ear recently?

“I feel like I’m constantly evolving my gear, but when it comes down to it, I have four or five main sounds. I gravitate to those same sounds no matter what gear I use.

“It’s always very attack-based, punchy and bassy, which comes from the top side of my instrument and lends itself to very sustained sounds.

“But I have my harsh lead sound – with that, I live the kind of envelope filter type of thing, where there’s less attack. And that’s interesting because it's the opposite of the tapping approach. The point is, no matter the gear, I return to those sounds.

“But what’s amusing is, of late, I keep returning to the baritone ukulele. I love using it with my other instruments for some interesting pairings.”

Are you ever inspired to pick up a traditional guitar?

“Only if there’s something special about it; and if I do, I still use strange tunings that are just a bit twisted! But I am interested in certain pickups I could add to my instrument, where I’d have infinite sustain and some multi-phonic options.

“I know there are guitars out there that have that; I’d be curious about those. But with the Warr Guitar, there’s so much to explore, and I still have a lot to master, so I try not to get distracted.”

One might say you already are a master of the Warr Guitar. What advice would you give to a new player just picking it up?

“There are some core technical things that tapping players need to learn that, generally, guitar tappers don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong – there are some great guitar tappers, but there are aspects of the technique that I’ve figured out that you can learn quickly. Track me down and I’ll give a quick lesson to get you started.

“To summarize, you’ve got to be relaxed, which is a contradiction of the instrument because you’d think with tapping, you’d have to be so focused on where your fingers are.

“But really, the most important thing is the release of the string rather than where you put your finger. You won’t get good sound unless you have good release. So, be relaxed, practice, and learn when to release the note.”

• Tu-Ner’s debut album T1 - Contact Information is out now.

Dave Matthews has explained how King Crimson and Robert Fripp’s “spread out” fingering techniques have inspired his music during an interview with Howard Stern.

Asked about his love for the hugely innovative British prog band, Matthews beams: “They just go out of their minds!”

“He would probably look at my guitar playing and think, ‘You're a moron,’ but he has this tuning where he plays in a really formal way [with his hands spread out],” he adds, with an acoustic guitar to hand.

“Like with the song, Warehouse, it makes a sound, and you can make these patterns up and just sort of repeat the patterns. There's probably an easier way to play it [where you're less spread out across the fretboard] but it's satisfying.”

Alongside 1991 hit Warehouse, he also cites how Satellite, released four years later, came after he wanted to replicate Fripp’s unique technique.

“I was just trying to imitate him, and I was also ignorant. So it was a combination of those two things. I was trying to play what he was playing by looking rather than listening, like ‘What is he doing?’ So I tried and it didn't sound anything like what he was doing, but it was nice.”

The King Crimson founder, who recently completed a UK run of his Sunday Lunch covers with his wife Toyah, is credited with developing new standard tuning. The tuning (C2-G2-D3-A3-E4-G4), places each string at perfect intervals, a method of tuning used for violins, cellos and mandolins. It prompted the guitarist to relearn the King Crimson back catalog.

Discussing his Sunday Lunch endeavours in an interview with Guitar World, Fripp was clear to underline that the covers he creates with his wife are more than just wacky entertainment. 

“We’re not taking the piss, playing silly rock riffs," he said. “I work hard to honor the original players.

“Our kitchen performances have been described as ramshackle, which I think is very fair and generous! It’s very clear that we don’t put too much time into, shall we say, high-definition performances.

“The key to it is, ‘Are we having a good time?’ And I’ve noticed in retrospect that the absurdity is rampant... From time to time, we forget to take the washing down. I might look at a video after and see laundry hanging up or a tea towel drying, all manner of things!”

The Dave Matthews Band released their 10th studio album, Walk Around The Moon in May 2023. Two months later, Matthews joined John Mayer's Dead & Company on stage, covering All Along the Watchtower, Not Fade Away, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and The Weight. 

Matthews and co will play five dates across the US and Mexico in February and March before embarking on a European run in April.

For more information, head to DaveMatthews.com.

The legendary Tony Levin is truly a bass player for all seasons. Who else straps wooden sticks to their fingers when they play? Having spent many years supplying basslines of impeccable quality in Peter Gabriel’s band as well as holding down tours with perhaps the most innovative of all the old-school prog acts, King Crimson, Levin’s credentials speak for themselves.

In between all this bass magnificence Levin also plays the Chapman Stick, the most intimidating musical instrument ever devised, in a variety of ensembles including the self-explanatory Stick Men. “I don’t really think about the crossover between the two instruments,” he says. “Some songs just seem right for the stick, and others for the bass guitar.”

Asked to recommend 4 albums with killer bass playing, Levin gets listing…

1. Oscar Pettiford – Oscar Pettiford (1954)

"Oscar Pettiford’s Tricotism is an album I grew up with. I’m not really sure the name is right – it’s really a series of albums with the same players, Julius Watkins on French horn, and Charlie Rouse on sax. It has great, tasty playing, especially by Pettiford – he always hits the right notes, and they’re always placed perfectly for maximum groove."

2. D'Angelo – Voodoo (2000)

"D’Angelo’s Voodoo made me want to go back to school, figuratively, as a bassist. It was a new kind of groove (to me) that broke all the rules I grew up with, but was amazingly cool. I raved to my fellow players about it, and tried to introduce that kind of playing to some of my music – I couldn’t do it… so it’s still on my list of ‘got to learn this, dude.’" 

3. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – In Glorious Times (2007)

"Then there’s Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s In Glorious Times. I love this style of music – it has great power, great musicianship and great bass playing by Dan Rathbun, sometimes on instruments he built himself. One thing you gotta love about music: this band may have been influenced a bit by King Crimson, but then I, a member of King Crimson, was very much influenced by them! With Stick Men, I insisted we do a piece of theirs for our first year on the road, though it was tough and not a great rendition, just to get us thinking in that vein."

4. Joni Mitchell – Hejira (1976)

"Finally, there’s Joni Mitchell’s Hejira. Jaco’s playing before that had impressed me, but it didn’t move me, maybe because it was so far from the styles I played. But the bass playing on this album is sublime: to me it is the apotheosis of fretless playing behind a singer. It is beautifully melodic on its own, but never interfering with the great vocals, unique harmonically, with a style of its own, and impeccably in tune… I put the fretless bass away for 10 years!”

Tony Levin will soon be joining Peter Gabriel's long-awaited i/o – The Tour. Tickets for the 2023 run across Europe and North America are available from Peter Gabriel's official site.

Since emerging on the New York studio scene in the 1970s, Tony Levin has forged a reputation as a modern master of the bass guitar. “I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have played with so many great musicians,” he tells us. “To have played some great music, and just to have been able to keep playing the bass – the thing I love to do – for all of my adult years.”

Aside from a remarkable career as a sideman, playing on landmark recordings for the likes of John Lennon, Paul Simon, Kate Bush, Lou Reed and David Bowie, Levin’s preference for prog rock led to his taking up the Chapman Stick, joining the envelope-pushing King Crimson, and becoming a permanent touring member of Peter Gabriel’s band. He’s worked closely with Peter Gabriel since 1977, and will be a core member of the group’s 2023 i/o tour.

"With Peter, it’s great music," says Tony. "There’s a lot of fun within the band, so everything still feels good to us. Peter’s a great performer, as ever, and the material is a pleasure to play, even after all these years.”

One of the most innovative bassists working today, Tony invented a system of striking the strings with two small drumsticks attached to his fingers. “I call it ‘funk fingers’, he says. “When I was working on Peter’s song ‘Big Time’, I asked Jerry Marotta to drum on the bass strings while I fingered the notes with my left hand. It took hours for us to do and the track wasn’t really used in the final mix, except in one place after the first chorus, but I had grown very attached to it. I just liked the percussive sound."

Using them live was a whole other level of real-time learning experience too, as he explains: “I tried to reproduce the performance live, with a drumstick in one hand, but it wasn’t working. One day at soundcheck, Peter said, “Why don’t you attach two sticks to your fingers?” I turned around to my tech and asked him, “Can we do that?” He pared down two drumsticks and found a piece of surgical tubing to attach them to my fingers." 

"We gradually refined the system and now I use two percussion sticks, which are thinner than drum sticks, and they have scoops cut out of them to fit my fingers. I’ve also wrapped the ends of the sticks in various materials to soften their attack; the bright sound can be too much for most record producers. I try it a lot in the studio, and often I’m told to “put those things away.”

As well as the i/o tour with Peter Gabriel next year, Tony has announced new dates with his Stick Men trio, which features Markus Reuter on guitar and King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto. "The Chapmen Stick is a great instrument. Its unusual tuning helps me to come up with unusual lines, which is something I'm always trying to do, and I'll take whatever help I can get."

For more information visit tonylevin.com

With a 32-disc boxset of his solo work during the late 1970s already released into the wild and a guitar book coming out in early autumn, Robert sits down with us at Fripp HQ in the middle England countryside to talk all things King Crimson, as we take an exclusive look at the instruments that have given voice to some of prog-rock’s finest moments...

Interviews with ‘That Awful Man’, as Robert Fripp refers to himself these days, are rare, and until now he hasn’t allowed his collection of guitars to be photographed, including the ’59 Les Paul Custom that was used on so many classic Crimson albums.

“I don’t collect guitars,” he tells us as we settle down to talk, “they are merely tools that I use in my work.” However, we note that the famous ’59 appears to be in almost pristine condition – in fact, it’s still shiny even after years on the road. “One careful owner,” he quips with a wry grin.

Anyone who wants to assess Fripp’s skills as a guitarist need only check out Fracture from the King Crimson album Starless And Bible Black. The Moto Perpetuo from that piece is a legendary example of his crosspicking finesse. 

His guitar journey began with lessons that found him playing some challenging classical pieces with a plectrum, instead of the more conventional fingerstyle. This influence reached into the Crimson repertoire and is apparent in 1970’s Peace – A Theme from In The Wake Of Poseidon.

“Yes, Carcassi Etude No 7, the middle section,” he tells us. “You probably wouldn’t be able to see the connection, but Peace – A Theme wouldn’t have quite ended up that way unless I practiced the Carcassi Etudes for fingerstyle, but with a pick because crosspicking was my speciality.”

Now that Crimson has entered another hiatus, the rendition of Starless in Japan last December being regarded by all as the last we’ll hear from the band, it’s time to catch up with Crimson’s only permanent member. And we start our conversation at the very beginning...

How did you become interested in music – and specifically the guitar – in the first place?

“My trajectory was at age 11 my sister and I bought two records, Rock With The Caveman by Tommy Steele and Don’t Be Cruel by Elvis Presley. The guitarist on Tommy Steele I learnt later was Bert Weedon, on Elvis, Scotty Moore. There weren’t any English rock musicians, they were all jazzers. Old men, basically. Old men who would come in and do the young character sessions. 

“Mel Collins’ [Crimson sax player] father would be doing the ripping tenor solos on [BBC music programme] Six-Five Special with Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott sitting next to him. They would be making derogatory comments on these young rock artists who really weren’t in the same musical ballpark as they were. 

“In America it was entirely different. There was nothing demeaning about playing rock music and moving out of blues. Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry, the sheer power of Jerry Lee Lewis... That was me around 11 to 12.

“At 13 trad jazz came along. I would go down to the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth and see all the characters: Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Monty Sunshine and just about everyone else that was working at the time. Memphis Slim I saw there, too – I think he was supporting Chris Barber. Wow, wow. At 15, hearing Mingus, Extrapolation. Max Roach, Town Hall New York City. 

“Then, at 17, the more challenging aspects of what we call classic music. It segued into The Beatles and 1960s English rock instrumentals. I saw The Outlaws at a show in Poole when I was 17 with Ritchie Blackmore, he was then 18. He was phenomenal. He had all the moves. He had the music, he had the playing, it was astonishing.

“The Bournemouth scene was very hot. Working in the first League Of Gentlemen we would do lots of specialty vocals: Four Seasons, Beatles. We would also do the instrumental specialities, Entry Of The Gladiators, which I didn’t realize until I met him years later was Mick Jones of Foreigner. Then I went off to college to take A-levels to go onto university and take a degree in estate management.

“My musical interest went slightly to the side, and I went to the Majestic Dance Orchestra to pay my way through college. When that came to an end, there was Hendrix, Sgt Pepper and things shot off in a different direction, to the extent I could no longer continue. Going on to London where I’d been accepted for a place for three years to take a degree in estate management at the College of Estate Management in South Kensington, I had my digs booked in Acton; how awful that was. I said to my father, ‘I can’t continue,’ and I turned professional on my 21st birthday.”

What was the first guitar you had when you began playing?

“It was an Egmond Freres, an appalling instrument. The action at the 7th fret, you needed pliers to depress it. It was appalling. It required me to develop such strong muscles that I remember in 1971 practicing to put less pressure into my left hand. I moved onto a cheap Rosetti guitar, which was not good. Then a Höfner; I believe it was a President, it was the cutaway version. It wasn’t great, but at least it was an instrument.

“My first good guitar was my Gibson ES-345 Stereo, which I bought from Eddie Moors music shop in Boscombe where on a Saturday afternoon I would give guitar lessons. Young characters would come in and say, ‘I’m interested in buying a guitar.’ They’d say, ‘We have an in-store guitar teacher who can give you lessons on Saturday afternoon.’ I’d go around the corner to something like a village hall in Boscombe and give guitar lessons. 

“Then in the evening I’d go on to Chewton Glen Hotel, this was when I was 17, and play in the Douglas Ward Trio. This was my first good guitar, and it was expensive, something like £350. That was the guitar with The League Of Gentlemen. That took me to London with Giles, Giles And Fripp, that guitar, which I used until 1968 when I got my first Les Paul. I only used the 345 again with Crimson on In The Wake Of Poseidon on Cat Food, and Bolero [from Lizard].”

1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom

Was there an influence on you musically from listening to classical music?

“I began listening to the Bartók String Quartet and Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring. The turning point in my musical, and I suppose personal, life was something like ‘music is one’. I didn’t hear separate categories, I heard music but as if it was one musician speaking in a variety of dialects. The crashing chords of Rite Of Spring or Bartók, where is that coming from? The opening bars of Purple Haze or Day In The Life, I Am The Walrus, it all had this incredible power as it reached over and pulled me towards it.”

You’re well known for your crosspicking ability on pieces such as Fracture. How did this skill begin to develop?

“It’s what in Guitar Craft is called ‘a point of seeing’. It’s not the process of rational deduction of working out; you simply see something. I remember specifically the moment. I was at home in the first floor rear room where my sister and myself would do homework. I was practicing Study In 3/4 by Dick Sadleir. 

“My guitar teacher, Don Strike, gave me a very good technical foundation. In terms of current music, it was a little old-fashioned. It was kind of corny for a young character who enjoyed Scotty Moore. Instead of doing bom-bish-bish bom-bish-bish, I began crosspicking. The same shapes, the same notes but crosspicking it. 

“Seeing that that was so obviously the way to go I continued to develop that as a speciality, including [Francisco] Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra, which was a very challenging piece for the pick.”

There’s not a great deal of blues influence in your playing...

“Why didn’t I become a blues guitarist? Probably because I wasn’t a very good blues guitarist. The thing is, a lot of young players and some established players have said to me, ‘I only wanted to be like Clapton.’ They didn’t say it, but you knew it. That wasn’t my aim. Stunning player, but... The question eventually became formulated for me as, ‘What would Hendrix sound like playing the Bartók String Quartets?’

“In 1969 the major musical influences in Crimson were Ian McDonald and Michael Giles. I recognized they had a connection with music, which at the time I didn’t have, but I could recognize in others. I’d known this probably since I was 17 or 18 working alongside and going to see the other young players in Bournemouth, stunning young players.”

How did McDonald’s and Giles’ influence connect with you in Crimson’s early days?

“In the studio recording In The Court Of The Crimson King they would make a comment, [and] I would adjust my response to sit in accord with theirs. Then when they left it was heartbreaking for me, because although Giles wasn’t a writer his contributions to the arrangements and direction were stunning.

“My primary role for In the Court... in Crimson in 1969, as I saw it, was to come up with guitar parts that supported the writing. Although you could say that McDonald and [Peter] Sinfield were the main writers, you can’t exclude Giles from that. You can’t really exclude anyone from that, it was five people. 

“Moonchild on that album, the music was 99 per cent Robert [Fripp, himself] with one suggestion from Ian McDonald to move a G to a G#, which we incorporated. This was Ian, he had a gift for the simple melodic phrase.

“That’s what we went with. For the writing credit, which properly should have been Fripp/Sinfield, I decided to have all the names of the members because I felt that actually everyone was involved equally. How can you exclude anyone at that point? For me, Crimson has always been a co-operative, which it certainly was in 1969.”

• Robert Fripp’s 20 greatest guitar moments

This led to some turbulence within the band, didn’t it?

“My personal difficulties with any Crimson musician since have been if they favor themselves or see themselves as somehow coming ahead of the other players or the music. To put that positively within Crimson, the music comes first: principle one. Principle two: the band comes first. The interests of the band come ahead of the interests of the other players. Three: we share the money. Why do there seem to be personal difficulties? Look at those three principles and really that’s the clue to anything that follows.

“If the music does come first, then all the names are there at the top. We shared the record royalties; we shared the publishing royalties. There is a legitimate concern that if you have one person who writes all the music, shouldn’t they get a disproportionate part of the publishing? The answer is yes, they should. This was a legitimate concern for Adrian Belew.

“From 1994 onwards, we would look at essentially who had made the greatest contribution to writing this piece. Between 1970 and 1974 when Robert was the primary writer, even if Bill Bruford didn’t play a note he would receive an equal share of the publishing income. Why? Firstly, because it exemplified the view that where there is an equal commitment there is an equitable distribution.

“Secondly, if Robert made a value judgement or recommendation that we go this way, there was never any question that my recommendation for either a musical or business direction favored me. There was never a conflict of interests with Robert. If I said, ‘Look, lads. I think we should do this.’ It was because I thought we should do this. Why? Primarily for the music, then primarily the interest of the band and so on.”

Gibson ES-345

The recent release of the Exposures boxset features Steven Wilson remixes of your solo material. As with the Crimson remixes Steven has done, they’re remarkably faithful to the originals.

“When I go in to mix something, I don’t go in with a historic overview to mind. Steven’s aim was very faithfully to reproduce the original but with modern technology. There had been the odd discussions. For example, with Lizard there were one or two things we didn’t quite put in and so on. My view on occasion has been we actually didn’t get it right the first time, so now is an opportunity. Then you say, ‘What’s right and what’s wrong?’ If it has been adopted and accepted by decades of listeners, then maybe that’s what it is. Steven aims to get it exactly as. Me, I’d be very happy to go a different way.

“In terms of Exposure I went down and worked with Steven, I was very up for complete reimagining. Steven: ‘No, this is a classic.’ His brief, this is Steven, is to present this as the original. How can I put it? That desk [pointing to an antique writing desk in the room in which we are sitting] is an 1830s desk. It’s a classic of its kind. If I were designing a desk for today to use with modern things, such as having computers on the side, it wouldn’t be designed like that. However, for me that is the classic and I’m not going to redesign it. That’s Steven’s point of view: this is the classic. The only innovation we had on Exposure was with [Dolby] Atmos mixing, which isn’t, I suppose, entirely legitimate.”

Revisiting Exposure, it is possible to see a stylistic link between the albums Red from the mid-70s and Discipline from the early 80s, with the two guitars playing offset then synchronous parts. Was this an idea forming in your mind during Crimson’s hiatus in the late 70s?

“Was it Steve Reich? Was it Philip Glass? Was it Robert Fripp? Was it in the air? Was it world music? Anyway, all of this, my thinking, my academic interests and approach to music were in place in 1980, 1981, with the coming together of that form of King Crimson. I met Adrian [Belew] personally at The Bottom Line in New York when I went down to see Steve Reich. Bowie was there with Adrian. We went over and said hello and Adrian said, ‘Let’s get together for tea tomorrow,’ so we did. That’s how our personal connection began.”

People might not be aware that you actually write these pieces out on manuscript paper.

“Yes, I do. I don’t give the other players charts. I don’t like the word ‘bandleader’ because I’ve never viewed myself as a bandleader. That’s another endless wittering on. You have [Charles] Mingus. I understand that Mingus didn’t give the other characters in the band charts. Why? Because it goes in through your eyes. You present the music you have and you say, ‘If I’m playing this, what are you playing?’ One of Bill’s good quotes from the time was, ‘It was as if Robert expected us to know what to play.’ Of course. If I have to tell you what to play, why are we working together?

“What I would aim to do is construct situations or conditions within which the talent of each of these players is given an opportunity to develop. To the extent that when Robert composed for Crimson it was writing specifically for these people in this band to play. Not a generic piece that anyone could play, it was specifically for these people.

“There were two occasions when I presented Larks’ [Tongues in Aspic, Part] Two to that formation of Crimson. We had short rehearsals in Covent Garden and then we went to Richmond Athletic Club. I presented the defining Larks’ rhythm and chords at Covent Garden and it wasn’t heard, it went nowhere. Then I played it at Richmond Athletic Club and Bill and John [Wetton] leapt straight in. They had it; clicked, it worked. Most really good rock drummers in London at the time wouldn’t have heard it because it wasn’t written for them.

“With Crimson it was an open form of engagement, which has always been complex, always problematic and always very demanding. If you would like a band to break up, have writing rehearsals. What you do when you hit that problem is you get on the road. Then you introduce an audience into the situation, music comes to life and you’ll keep going. Not that Robert is a bandleader, but in terms of practical strategies for keeping the band together and working, you move from writing rehearsals as quickly as possible into live performance.”

Can we talk a little about gear?

“You know I have no interest in that. I have no interest in gear at all. For example, whatever fuzzbox, whatever guitar, whatever amp I’m using I’ll get my sound. Here’s an example of this. I went to see Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea at Carnegie Hall: wow, breathtaking. Chick Corea is stage right, Herbie Hancock on the left. They changed places and played and their sounds went with them. I still don’t understand that. How can that be? It cannot be that the sound of a piano changes. The sound of a piano is the sound of a piano, surely?

“With Crimson I use Axe-Fx, which is very good. For basic work that I can carry myself without a team of engineers I use a Helix. Why? Because Jakko [Jakszyk] uses a Helix and if you’re working in a band with another character you aim for compatibility. The other thing is, he can tell me how to work it.”

The rig you use for soundscaping hasn’t changed too dramatically over the years, has it?

“It changed. I’m trying to think when it changed from the ‘Solar Voyager’ to the ‘Sirius Probe’. It changed when I stopped using the [TC Electronic] TC2290, which I used to use for sampling. It developed high-level digital frizz. I started using the Eventide 8000s, which are astonishing things. You have 90-second samples that will repeat. You can leave them 24 hours, come back, no decay, no degeneration whatsoever. For sampling, that’s astonishing. There is something irreplaceable in those early versions of the Eventides. I’ve no idea what the algorithms are, but wow. They shape the sound.

“In terms of the 8000s where I have bona fide quadraphonic sound, what I do is I work to ratios in delay. If you have four outputs, if a short loop is needed, one stereo pair will have 12 seconds on one side and 18 seconds on the other. You have a 3:2 ratio. On the next one I tend to have an offset of maybe 20.5 to 21 seconds. It’s just essentially the same delay, which over a period of maybe half an hour will change. 

“If I’m going for longform soundscapes it might be something like 42:49 or 42:63. On the other stereo pair to complete the quadraphonic might be 21:35 or 63:72. In other words, there are ratios within the time delays generally in terms of six or seven seconds, which lots of experience – including being booed constantly – has suggested to me this has resonance.

“I’ll then go in and I have my defining programs within the Eventide 3000s, which sends it shooting off in different directions. In terms of soundscape performances, I bypass all of that and through an Eventide Eclipse I have a solo sound. It gives me my solo voice. In the quiet moments the solo voice will come up with all of this, all in real-time. 

“I have had various suggestions, ‘Bob, why don’t you use Ableton Live?’ The answer is, when I’m doing a live performance soundscape with the rig I have, the Sirius Probe, all of the parameters I can change in real-time by hand as I am playing. I don’t have to go to a computer and fiddle about. I don’t have to look up here and see what’s going on, I can do it all with one hand.”

Tokai LP-type

Are you still using the Roland GR-1?

“It’s set up in my full Crimson rig. I haven’t been using it recently, but I have used it certainly in 2015, probably using it for the first half of seven-, eight-piece Crimson. Why? Because it does two or three things that nothing else does. The same as the 3000s. The GR-1 has a fretless bass sound, that is breathtaking, which I would use to have fun with Tony Levin. Tony would be doing some upright slides, I might slip in some fretless. Tony would look up wondering where the bass sound was coming from.

“It’s also stunning in terms of low-end for soundscapes. It also has bell sounds, which in combination with an Eventide 3000 programme called ‘In Six’ makes astonishing sounds. It also has a piano sound, which I haven’t really used since 2003, but which was astonishing. I used it a lot in all the ProjeKcts.”

Technology has come a long way since your early Frippertronics work.

“Yes, that’s right. I’ve had these posts, ‘Bring back the ReVox. Where is Frippertronics?’ It’s just not feasible. Why not? If you go back to when I used that technology you’d have to fly it. What would happen if there was a bounce? Here’s another one: you have it set up on the table, what would happen if someone walked by and bumped the table? The answer is, there would be a fluttering on the tape. You’d then have to shape the entire Frippertronics piece around the flutter. If, as in Madrid in May 1979, what happens if the ReVox the record company has brought in begins to catch fire? What do you do? These are practical examples. It’s not feasible.”

Would it be true to say that The Guitar Circle book you have coming out in September isn’t what you might call a conventional guitar tutor?

“Correct. It’s the attitude. It’s less what you do, it’s more how you do and why you do. We’ve now had guitar courses since March 1985 and the book is essentially a report on the history of Guitar Craft and the Guitar Circle to date. If you’re looking for a book of guitar exercises, this is not the way to go.

“People who have a background in martial arts feel an immediate affinity with Guitar Craft in the Guitar Circle. One character said to a pal of mine it’s like martial arts with a guitar. I’ve a little tai chi, some muay Thai. Here, your response is governed by the intentionality of the person with whom you’re sparring. If you wait for them to make a move you’re on the floor. 

“What you respond to is their intention. How we respond to someone’s intention before there’s any movement at all is a subtle thing. How to explain that? That falls under the heading of ‘cosmic horse shit’. The point is, it can very easily be experienced.

“Guitar Craft was basically developing a personal discipline with a guitar. The Guitar Circle is developing a personal discipline within others. We’re learning to work with others and with ourself. In a sense it’s a maturing and a development within a social context.

“One of the difficulties I’ve had doing interviews over a period of 53 years with guitar magazines is that just about everything that is real with me in terms of how I experience and engage with music and other musicians is subtle. If I’m explaining it in bold terms, it falls under the heading of cosmic horse shit. 

“One of the important principles in this is ‘accept nothing that someone is telling you, presenting you, judge by your own experience’. When someone comes into a Guitar Circle, don’t take Robert’s view of what might be happening for yourself, what is your experience?”

Fernandes Gold Custom

• Robert Fripp’s 32-disc boxset, Exposures, is out now, via DGM/Panegyric. The Guitar Circle book will be released on 1 September via Panegyric Publishing in association with Discipline Global Mobile.

Given that Anthony Garone wrote an entire book dedicated to mastering King Crimson’s 1974 epic Fracture, one of the most notoriously difficult guitar pieces in all of prog-rock, you’d think he’d have a mind-blowing story of hearing that string-skipping behemoth for the first time. 

But as a 16-year-old with an insatiable appetite for riffs, he initially considered it just another musical meal.

“I didn’t think about Fracture as a song,” he tells Guitar World. “I thought, ‘This is food for a guitarist.’ It was calories in, calories out. I remember I had a Sony Discman, and I put it on. I didn’t even listen to the song. I paused it every few seconds and played the notes that I heard. It was such an arrogant and youthful folly thing to do. 

“That’s how I approached it, like puzzle pieces that were almost meaningless to me. Fracture was like anything else – it didn’t matter if it sounded cool. It was purely like, ‘Can I figure this out?’” 

The simple answer: yes and no. Garone has spent 22 frustrating and eye-opening years attempting to decode the 11-minute composition (particularly the three-minute section defined by Robert Fripp’s “moto perpetuo” technique) – a challenge demonstrated on his YouTube channel Make Weird Music, and later in his densely packed memoir-meets-instructional-guide Failure to Fracture. 

Within, Garone details the technical expertise he acquired in pursuit of learning Fracture – including wisdom bestowed by Fripp himself during a week-long instructional course in 2015.

• Robert Fripp’s 20 greatest guitar moments

One day, the guitarist told his students, “Spend eight hours a day picking one open string, and then we can have a conversation.” Garone laughs at the memory: “It’s like when you hear these nutrition experts saying, ‘All you’ve gotta do is cut sugar out of your diet!’” 

Of course, nothing is easy about Fracture. “What people misunderstand is you’re not playing 10 or 11 notes per second – you’re changing strings 10 or 11 notes per second,” he says. “You have to be a robot.” 

And that analytical approach suits Garone, a prolific transcriber and tinkerer. “I’ve just always had that engineering mindset where it’s something to pick apart,” he says.

“But man, if you get me listening to Jupiter by Gustav Holst, I’ll still tear up after how many listens. I look at Crimson – and any other music – as half-emotional and half-architectural.”

• Failure to Fracture: Learning King Crimson's Impossible Song is out now via Stairway Press.

Robert Fripp is widely hailed as the king of progressive rock guitar – but he squirms visibly under that crown. In 2014, asked by Classic Rock if he’s always taken issue with King Crimson’s “prog” label, he made his feelings blatantly clear: “Yes, it’s a prison,” he said. “If you walk on stage and you’re playing music, fine. But if you’re walking on stage and you’re playing progressive rock – death.” 

In a way, that discomfort makes sense. As King Crimson’s key guiding force – and lone consistent member – since their debut LP, 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King, Fripp has typically veered away from popular tropes and trends. 

Across 13 studio albums (along with a smattering of EPs and live records), he’s evolved from the band’s early pseudo-symphonic style to infuse the avant-garde, classical, borderline jazz-fusion, free improvisation, heavy metal, New Wave, industrial and multi-drummer mayhem. No style has ever been off limits, and every Crimson era is an island unto itself. 

You can attribute much of that range to Fripp’s vision as a bandleader: no other rock musician is more willing to call it quits, embark on an extended hiatus and start from scratch with a new lineup. (And few have recruited so well for a particular artistic aim; it’s hard to imagine King Crimson’s sleeker ’80s revamp without the two American recruits, singer-guitarist Adrian Belew and bassist Tony Levin.)

After all, Crimson have never been a guitar-first band – it’s almost always been about ensemble composition, using the unique tools of the musicians in his company.

“If you listen to King Crimson’s records, you realize the guitar playing has always been one of the smallest things that the band does,” Fripp told Guitar Player in 1974. “One of the reasons for that is I’ve always been more happy in developing the other musicians; developing them as players.”

• Robert Fripp in-depth: his quest to combine Hendrix and Bartók, what made King Crimson “problematic” and why he has “no interest in gear at all”

Democratic function aside, a great deal of Crimson’s endurance does boil down to Fripp’s creativity and prowess on guitar. He started playing at 11, learning on a right-handed instrument, despite being left-handed – and in a way, that was a bit of foreshadowing.

He’s always been keen to experiment, to approach the guitar from an unlikely vantage point: devising an overlapping playing system with Belew in the ’80s, utilizing unconventional harmonies and rhythms, creating the tape delay technique known as “Frippertronics,” inventing New Standard Tuning (C/G/D/A/E/G), which he teaches students at his Guitar Craft courses.

And Fripp’s non-Crimson resumé is equally versatile. As a guest player (and occasional producer), he’s worked with art-rock giants (Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads), bona-fide pop stars (Daryl Hall, Blondie), prog bands (Van Der Graaf Generator, Matching Mole) and folk acts (the Roches) – not to mention his slightly under-the-radar solo projects and innovative collaborations with Brian Eno. 

It would be impossible to fully survey the breadth of Fripp’s style in one semi-concise list. But in a modest attempt to highlight the imagination and influence of his guitar playing, we’ve selected 20 essential, career-spanning moments – from Frippertronic soundscapes to metallic riffs, from arpeggiated acoustic reveries to feedback fireworks.

20. Sky – Robert Fripp, from 1996’s Radiophonics (1995 Soundscapes Volume 1 – Live in Argentina) 

It’s fair to say Fripp diehards are an open-minded bunch, but many faithful found their patience tested with the guitarist’s Soundscapes series, which ranges from atonal ambience to peaceful meditations like Sky. 

The track, the final movement from his live Buenos Aires Suite, is masterfully constructed, each sliver of tone bleeding in a color, like sun pouring in through a stained-glass window. By the piece’s end, you’ve lost all sense of timing and chord sequence, just allowing yourself to soar through the kaleidoscope.

19. The Zero of the Signified: Robert Fripp, from 1980’s God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners

Fripp continued to refine his Frippertronic experiments on his second solo LP – and he pushes hardest on its funkier second side, Under Heavy Manners, combining layered guitar textures and driving, four-on-the-floor rhythm sections into a style he dubbed “Discotronics.” 

At just under 13 minutes, closer The Zero of the Dignified isn’t exactly an easy listen – the ever-repeating lead guitar lick, a six-note motif similar to the cyclical pattern on King Crimson’s Frame by Frame, is a catalyst for hypnosis or anxiety, depending on one’s mood.

But the entire guitar arrangement is subtly, almost subconsciously, cinematic, as those industrial-tinged loops zoom past like menacing storm clouds.

18. I Advance Masked: Andy Summers & Robert Fripp, from 1982’s I Advance Masked

It may seem like an unlikely pairing on paper, but Fripp and Police guitarist Andy Summers found a fascinating stylistic middle ground on I Advance Masked, the first of the pair’s two collaborative LPs.

The centerpiece is the opening title track, contrasting Summers’ chiming Synchronicity-era tones with Fripp’s dizzying chromatic runs over a muted kick drum pulse. “I would say the I Advance Masked album,” Fripp told Guitar Player in 1986, “was a matter of research and development and arts and crafts, and of professional musicians working honorably.” 

No doubt about that. It’s familiar territory for both of them, but the record occupies its own unique little corner in both of their catalogs.

17. Upon This Earth: David Sylvian, from 1986’s Gone to Earth 

Fripp found a simpatico collaborator in David Sylvian, former frontman of art-pop band Japan; they worked together on multiple tours and even recorded a 1993 LP, The First Day, billed under both of their names. 

But Fripp also added some reliably evocative guitar to Sylvian’s sprawling double-LP Gone to Earth, including an array of atmospheric tones on Upon This Earth. Over a reverb-smothered two-chord pattern of slide guitar and piano, the Crimson leader squeaks out some pristine birdsong that elevates the track into the stratosphere.

16. Hammond Song: The Roches, from 1979’s The Roches

Fripp was wildly prolific during the break between King Crimson’s 1974 disbandment and 1981 reinvention: recording solo work, making plenty of studio cameos, producing a handful of classic records. In one of his oft-forgotten collaborations, he helmed The Roches, the American folk-rock trio’s self-titled debut – a project that arose after Fripp saw the group perform in New York and, impressed by what he saw, volunteered his services. 

His instrumental touch is minimal throughout the album, mostly relegated to occasional ambiance. But one standout contribution, the breathtaking guitar break on Hammond Song, is a highlight from the entire pre/post-Crimson era. 

His understated solo, a series of snaking patterns and sustained tones (cutely credited here as “Fripperies”), brings a glimpse of the ethereal to an otherwise earthly ballad. (Bonus factoid: Levin, the guitarist’s future bandmate, also appears on The Roches, giving King Crimson diehards another reason to seek this one out.)

15. Heroes: David Bowie, from 1977’s Heroes 

It could be Bowie’s crowning achievement, but Heroes wouldn’t reach such lofty heights without Fripp’s subtle, yet essential, guitar work. Compared to the ornate Frippertronics or rapid-fire picking that define much of his catalog, the two-note phrase at this song’s core might seem pedestrian by comparison. 

But it’s hard to imagine a guitarist drawing out more emotion from those two notes – sustained bursts of tone that are essentially as famous as Bowie’s own vocal melody. And it’s not like Fripp just tossed off his cameo; as producer Tony Visconti told Sound on Sound, he used a “fine science” to craft his part, measuring the distance between his guitar and the speaker to create a perfect feedback for each note he played.

14. Sartori in Tangier: King Crimson, from 1982’s Beat

Of King Crimson’s early ’80s trilogy, Beat is often the most overlooked – arriving after the bold New Wave-prog evolution of Discipline, this album was naturally a little less radical.

But the band continued to experiment with fascinating results: Take, for example, the instrumental Sartori in Tangier, in which Fripp’s violin-like leads pirouette over the hypnotically funky groove built on Levin’s thumping Chapman Stick and Bill Bruford’s clacking percussion.

It sounds like no other Crimson song – or really any other song, period. “The music was very stage-friendly,” Bruford told the DGM site. “[I]t had its own internal musical drama which worked well in that environment and it was a complete groove to play live. Nightly I could look forward to Robert’s solo at the end of [Sartori in Tangier].”

13. Evening Star: Fripp & Eno, from 1975’s Evening Star

On their second collaborative project, Fripp and Eno saved their most experimental tendencies for the six-part, 28-minute closer An Index of Metals. But side one is soothing and placid, particularly on the twinkling title track: Fripp’s sustained leads bob calmly amid the waves of clean strumming and pinging harmonics, occasionally joined by Eno’s synths. It’s an atmosphere as serene as the misty mountain-like landscape on the album cover.

12. Baby’s on Fire: Brian Eno, from 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets

Brian Eno ratchets up the tension throughout this warped glam-pop oddity, singing bratty lines over a tick-tock hi-hat and out-of-tune, two-chord pulse that slowly worms its way under your skin. 

It’s unsettling and somewhat hilarious, but the song achieves classic status only through Fripp’s contribution: he goes wild as the piece grinds on, sparking off some of his most conventionally bluesy and metallic playing, adding feedback and seasick bent notes to the recipe.

11. Swastika Girls II: Fripp & Eno, from 1973’s (No Pussyfooting)

Swastika Girls II is like the evil cousin of The Heavenly Music Corporation, closing out (No Pussyfooting), Fripp’s debut collaboration with ambient master Eno, with a transcendental swath of VSC-3 synthesizer, clean picking and laser-beam leads. 

The guitarist’s showpiece solo, laid out over the duo’s signature tape loops, is both evocative and discordant, occasionally adopting an Eastern feel. 

Radical stuff – and it apparently arose in the magic of the moment: “Brian set up the looping in the control booth,” he wrote in his DGM Live diary, “and, after five minutes of listening to the looping playing in to the multi-track, I walked into the studio, strapped on [and] wailed out.”

10. Breathless: Robert Fripp, from 1979’s Exposure

Breathless is a lost classic in the Fripp oeuvre, a stylistic hybrid between the metallic crunch of King Crimson’s Red, the textural soundscapes of his Eno collaborations and the sort of New Wave-leaning sleekness he’d perfect with Crimson’s ’80s lineup in just a couple years. 

Few of his riffs punch with such heavyweight force, ascending the scale over the funky, bombastic rhythm section of drummer Narada Michael Walden and bassist/future bandmate Levin. Fripp is clearly fond of the tune, having revived it onstage in 2017 with Crimson’s triple-drummer lineup.

9. Exiles: King Crimson, from 1973’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

This starlit ballad is one of the few ’70s Crimson tunes not dominated by Fripp’s electric guitar. But that’s precisely what makes it such a balanced tune, allowing plenty of space for Mellotron, John Wetton’s melodic bass and almost-too-high-for-his-range belting, David Cross’s violin and Bruford’s minimalist drumming. 

Fripp mostly sticks to the acoustic, a rarity for this era – and his sublime arpeggios add a sense of poignancy that fits the track. Of course, he also squeezes in a tasteful electric solo at the end – the icing on this multi-layered cake.

8. Starless: King Crimson, from 1974’s Red 

Red’s 12-minute closing epic fell dangerously close to the cutting room floor – according to Wetton, Fripp and Bruford weren’t impressed with the initial version presented during rehearsal for 1974’s Starless and Bible Black. (A meandering instrumental essentially took that song’s place on the record.)

But after some expanding the sax-laced ballad with some new, menacing sections and workshopping the tune onstage, Starless wound up as a classic in the Crim oeuvre.

Fripp covers a wide stylistic range here: tackling the haunting main theme, ratcheting up the tension midway through with a series of one-note phrases in two-string bundles, adding some jarring riffs that sound like error messages from malfunctioning robots.

7. The Night Watch: King Crimson, from 1974’s Starless and Bible Black

It’s a lost Crimson masterpiece, arriving midway through one of the band’s strangest and most misunderstood albums, Starless and Bible Black. 

Much of that project was built on improvised live recordings that were later tweaked and augmented in the studio – and as such, long stretches of its runtime are challenging to traditional prog fans, defined by loose instrumental explorations more than conventional riffs and choruses. 

But The Night Watch is an exception to that meandering vibe – a showcase for King Crimson’s melodic side and wide band dynamics. Cross’ weepy violin and Wetton’s melancholy vocal grab you immediately, but Fripp is the MVP: he opens with frenzied tremolo strumming that dissolves into gorgeous harmonics and sweeping, vibrato-heavy leads.

6. 21st Century Schizoid Man: King Crimson, from 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King

Robert Fripp’s legend was born with 21st Century Schizoid Man, the iconic opening track from King Crimson’s debut LP. Of course, the strength lies in the full-band attack – from Michael Giles’ spasmodic drum fills to Ian McDonald’s menacing saxophones to Greg Lake’s throat-ripping vocal to Peter Sinfield’s war-torn lyric. 

“For me, it was group writing,” Fripp told Rolling Stone in 2019. “And it wouldn’t have been possible without those five young men.” But Fripp’s guitar is certainly on fire here, whether it’s firing off chunky chords, screaming in unison with Lake’s opening bass riff or gliding through the jazzy section with fuzzy leads and palm-muted melodies.

5. St. Elmo’s Fire: Eno, from 1975’s Another Green World

Few musicians think more conceptually about sound than Eno. Legend has it that, while recording this oceanic art-pop tune, he challenged Fripp to channel the sound of a Wimshurst machine, the electrostatic generator created in the late 1800s. 

Whether or not he succeeded in that task is irrelevant: Eno’s unique request prompted one of the guitarist’s most thunderous, violently aggressive solos – a torrential downpour of notes that balances out the song’s overall sweetness. (On the final LP sleeve, he was credited with “Wimshurst guitar”.)

4. Level Five: King Crimson, from 2003’s The Power to Believe

By 2003, Fripp and Belew had crystallized a distinctive guitar symmetry, a sort of sonic telepathy refined through years of rehearsal and performance. King Crimson’s 13th LP, The Power to Believe, featured many of their signature moves, including a more aggressive, textured take on the interlocking style they’d perfected in the early ’80s. 

And Level Five is the pinnacle of their work in this more metallic arena: Check out how they harmonize in the first verse and enter into a lockstep back and forth over Pat Mastelotto’s glitchy electronic percussion, followed by chunky call-and-response riffs and ascending shredding.

3. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two: King Crimson, from 1973’s Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

“The question I posed myself might be put like this: ‘What would Hendrix sound like playing the ROS or a Bartok string quartet?’” Fripp wrote in his online diary in 2001. It’s an audacious query – and it resulted in one of King Crimson’s most distinctive achievements: the two-part piece that bookends the band’s fifth LP. 

The second half is the heart-stopper: Fripp piles up sheets of distortion that rise and fall in intensity, his instrument often interwoven with Cross’s violin and Wetton’s bass to create a snarling monster of strings.

“If an older man might look back at this and be struck by that young man’s arrogance,” Fripp wrote, “well, an ignorance of limitations sometimes allows the young of any age to achieve impossible things!” 

2. Frame by Frame: King Crimson, from 1981’s Discipline

When Fripp answered the call of King Crimson in the early ’80s, he found himself operating with a new array of influences and sonic tools: the at-turns delicate and quirky vocal stylings of Belew, Levin’s octave-spanning Chapman Stick, the possibilities of a dual-guitar attack, the gloss of New Wave and the interwoven ensemble complexity derived from gamelan music.

Frame by Frame is an essential showcase for all of the above, with Fripp and Belew teaming for a brain-rattling pattern where the guitarists briefly diverge into two different meters, only to align once more. 

1. Fracture: King Crimson, from 1974’s Starless and Bible Black

“Fracture is impossible to play,” Fripp wrote in his online diary in 2016. For most people, that’s 100 percent accurate. But Fripp is not most people: he mastered the 11-minute instrumental for King Crimson’s sixth studio LP, and he’s played it dozens of times onstage – a remarkable feat of mental, physical and perhaps even psychological endurance. 

The crux of Fracture, of course, is the three-minute section featuring his “moto perpetuo” (“perpetual motion”) technique, wherein his flurries of string-skipped notes unfurl over a dynamic rhythm section. 

Fracture may not be “impossible to play”, but it’s been a challenge, even for Fripp: “It took a year to bring my [practicing] up to speed, as it were,” he wrote, “and four months directly and specifically on Fracture. My wife had quite enough after a few weeks, so I had to lock the door to the cellar where I practice.” 

Staying in Fracture-ready shape may be a lifelong commitment – but all that matters is that he nailed it in the studio. One of rock’s most technically challenging pieces never sounds like rote muscle-flexing – in Fripp’s busy hands, the whiplash comes off as graceful.  

Ian McDonald, a founding member of King Crimson and Foreigner, has passed away, aged 75.

McDonald’s son announced the news of his father’s death on Facebook, saying: ”I’m deeply saddened to tell you that my father passed away yesterday from cancer. He was incredibly brave, and never lost his kindness or his sense of humour even when the going was rough.

“My father was a brilliant, intuitive musician, a gentle soul, and a wonderful dad. He will live on forever through his beautiful music and the love of his fans. Thank you all.”

McDonald was one of the founding members of King Crimson, joining the original 1968 line-up – alongside Robert Fripp, Greg Lake and Michael Giles – and lending his skills on keys, woodwinds and reed instruments. 

In particular, McDonald’s saxophone playing formed a crucial element of the band’s iconic debut, In the Court of the Crimson King.

Robert Fripp acknowledged McDonald’s contribution in the sleeve notes for 1997’s Epitaph boxset, stating that, “Ian brought musicality, an exceptional sense of the short and telling melodic line, and the ability to express that on a variety of instruments.”

Fripp has also since shared his reaction to McDonald’s passing on social media, posting, “My condolences to Max, family and friends. Fly well, Brother”.

A few years after his departure from King Crimson, McDonald was involved in co-founding another major group, joining pan-Atlantic AOR hit-makers Foreigner. Again, his musical contributions spanned multiple instruments, including guitar, saxophone and keys.

McDonald’s playing appeared on hits like Cold As Ice, Feels Like The First Time, Hot Blooded and Double Vision, and his tenure with the band lasted until 1980.

In later years, McDonald reunited with some of his former Crimson colleagues in offshoot group 21st Century Schizoid Band, which also featured Mel Collins, plus Michael and Peter Giles.

Jerry Ewing, editor of Prog magazine, stated that McDonald’s legacy ran far beyond that first King Crimson record: “Though he only appeared on the band’s debut album – 1969’s In The Court Of The Crimson King – he was instrumental in defining the band’s lasting prog-rock sound.”

King Crimson have had a colorful, 50+-year reign near the top of the prog-rock heap.

Now, a new documentary – In the Court of the Crimson King – seeks to untangle the group's complicated history, and the relationships of members past and present with the group's sole constant member, electric guitar innovator Robert Fripp. 

You can take a look at a new trailer for the film – which was directed by Toby Amies, and is set to make its world premiere at the 2022 SXSW film festival in Austin – below.

In the Court of the Crimson King primarily follows the latest iteration of the band during their 2019 50th Anniversary tour. Over the decades, King Crimson have broken up and subsequently reformed again – often with a dramatically different lineup – a number of times, with Fripp always at the center. From the looks of the trailer, In the Court of the Crimson King doesn't shy away from this rocky history.

“This is the first King Crimson where there’s not at least one member of the band that actively resents my presence,“ Fripp says at one point. “Which is astonishing.”

Aside from Fripp and members of the group's current lineup, the film also includes interviews with musicians from previous iterations of the band, such as former drummer Bill Bruford and Adrian Belew, who spent over a decade in total with the band as a singer and guitarist.

In the trailer, Bruford points to King Crimson as "the dream band viewed from outside," while Belew paints a less rosy picture, saying “When I came back from making some of that music, my hair had fallen out.”

For more info on when and where In the Court of the Crimson King will be screened at the SXSW festival, head on over to the SXSW website.

Aside from his day job touring with King Crimson, Fripp has also spent the last year and a half or so becoming an unlikely viral sensation for his Sunday Lunch series of off-beat covers with his wife, Toyah Wilcox.

In the process of taking on songs by the likes of Mötley Crüe and Metallica, Fripp said he gained a new appreciation for the giants of hard-rock guitar.

“They’re all utterly stunning things,” he told Rolling Stone of the riffs in the songs he covered with Wilcox. “I’m blown away by the original guitarists on these tracks. Phenomenal development and playing primarily since the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Van Halen onwards. Steve Vai, Satriani, the Metallica boys… The originators of the riffs are phenomenal players."

Tony Levin’s stellar career in progressive rock, jazz, and world music can be tracked through an estimated 500 album appearances. He has been a longterm member of King Crimson and Peter Gabriel’s band, as well as his own outfit, Stick Men, which he formed in 2010.

Whether playing a traditional stand-up or electric bass, occasional keyboards, or the Chapman Stick with its blend of bass and high-register strings, Levin has always been in demand as a session player. 

He has worked with John Lennon, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Paul Simon, and Stevie Nicks, and has toured extensively with Herbie Mann, Peter Frampton, Judy Collins and many more. An innovator and sonic explorer, his inventive methods of manipulating his equipment with all manner of weird and wonderful household goods are legendary. 

Levin is regularly voted one of the greatest bassists of all time, and the Boston-born musician continues to work with a variety of artists. We spoke to Tony recently, and he talked us through some selections from his mighty back catalog, including the importance of the drummer-bassist relationship and the role his two-month old daughter played in one particular incidence of instrument manipulation.

Must-have album: Ivan Lins – Awa Yiô (1991)

“Ivan is a fantastic, exciting Brazilian artist. It was an extraordinary opportunity to work with him, because he usually uses Brazilian musicians, but he came to my hometown, Woodstock. We chose the marvellous drummer, Vinnie Colaiuta, to play on the album. His groove is unique; you can tell it’s him from the way he puts together the accents on different notes.  

“It’s a joy and the music grooves easily, but also one learns a lesson from playing with a great musician, such as subtleties of rhythm. With Vinnie we listen to each other, and learn, and there’s a really great feel, whether that means being in the pocket, or just making the audience want to dance. For a bass player to play with a drummer providing all of that, you just have to sign on for the ride. It’s an interactive situation.

“In a recording situation, we all create our part on our instrument, which is easy on bass, but the vast majority of drummers would play pretty much the same thing. Great drummers like Vinnie have the ability to keep the music grooving, and also to add something of themselves to the groove.

“I used my five-string Stingray in those days, and also the Chapman Stick Bass with both bass and guitar strings.”

Worthy Contender: Robert Fripp – Exposure (1979)

“This allowed me to dive deeper into the world of progressive music. At the time, I’d not played with King Crimson or even listened to them all that much.

“The drummer, Narada Michael Walden, was more of a jazz, groove and funk player, and the two of us, along with Robert, got to create together.

“It was strikingly different music, with compositions that I found very challenging, and I really think it’s one of the albums where I grew as a player, from being in that place even for a short time. I was playing my Fender Precision, which I had grown up playing.

“I recorded with a mix of DI and also through my SVT Ampeg, with an 8x10 cabinet, which was my go-to in those days. The sound is a mix of the two, and when you really dig in, with the amp pretty loud, and almost overplay the P-Bass, there’s a crunch and distortion.

“I’d say about a quarter of the time I used a pick, the rest with fingers. I would put something like foam rubber to dampen the strings, to get a different kind of sound, with less midrange and less sustain.

“There’s a purity to recording with just the bass and your fingers. Some bassists can get great, unique expression with a pick, but I can’t do that, unfortunately.”

Cool Grooves: David Bowie – The Next Day (2013)

“I was thrilled to get the call to play on parts of this album and ended up on a decent amount of tracks. David’s bass player at the time was Gail Ann Dorsey, a great singer and bassist and a good friend of mine. The week of the recording, she was busy elsewhere and I was the backup. 

“I was honored to have the opportunity. The session in a studio at Greenwich Village, New York, was a secret, so nobody knew that we’d done it until almost exactly a year later. Tony Visconti, the producer, emailed me and said the single was out at midnight, so I could now tell people!  

“David would present a song, play it on keyboard and sing it, then the drummer Zach Alford would take it to the place where it needed to be. He’s a wondrous drummer. I got to interpret the bass end of things in my own way. Tony had plenty of good advice about the sound of the bass and the part; to me it doesn’t matter where it comes from, it only matters that it is supportive of the song and what it is about. 

“Sometimes staying out of the way is appropriate, and sometimes stepping to the front is what’s required. David gave me a surprising amount of leeway, said maybe a thing or two, and we ended up with a felicitous combination of all of us that really worked.”

Wild Card: Peter Gabriel – So (1986)

“I have had a long and close friendship and musical relationship with Peter, so it’s hard to know where to begin. Since I met him in 1976, I’ve enjoyed the process of creating bass parts with a man who’s so creative that a ‘normal bassline’ almost never worked for him. 

“For example, on Big Time I did the left-hand fingering, while Stewart Copeland drummed pretty fast on the strings. When we toured the album, I was practicing how to recreate it, but I couldn’t get it. Peter said, ‘Why don’t you put two drumsticks on your fingers and play that way?’ And so, with help from my tech, Andy Moore, we created chopped-off sticks attached to my fingers with stretch Velcro. I use those Funk Fingers to this day, and softened the attack by having the ends rubberized.  

“Now, the song Don’t Give Up, has a coda which is a very different, laid-back groove. It needed a similar bass sound with no sustain. My baby daughter Maggie was two months old, so it so happened that my bass case was full of diapers. I dampened the strings with a diaper to get short, thumpy notes. It became known between Peter and the producer, Daniel Lanois, as ‘The Super Wonder Nappy Sound’. They loved it! The door was always open to try an unusual approach.”'

Take a Deep Breath... Al Di Meola – Scenario (1983)

“Now this is not an album to avoid, musically, at all, but there are some unique issues I had with playing on it. Al had the very interesting idea of asking me and King Crimson’s drummer Bill Bruford to be on his jazz record, and the session was booked for Caribou Ranch Studio in Colorado; Michael Jackson, John Lennon, and others had worked there.  

“But the spanner in the works was that it was way high up in the mountains. Because of the altitude, you just cannot catch your breath. Bill and I came in late at night, and managed to get some sleep, but the next day in the studio I could not speak to anybody; maybe a couple of words before I had run out of air.  

“As you can imagine, discussing the tracks was impossible, and because of our schedules we only had one single day there and had to leave straight after. The making of it was very difficult, and it would have been musically better if we’d been able to acclimatize. It was really difficult for us to play.

“Since then, I’ve played at higher altitudes at concerts – I have played in Bolivia and visited northern Chile – but you need maybe three days before you’re acclimated to it. Everything is harder at those altitudes, and the whole experience was absolutely exhausting.”

With another Sunday comes yet another installment of Sunday Lunch from King Crimson electric guitar icon Robert Fripp and his wife, singer Toyah Wilcox.

This week sees them take on the Aerosmith classic Love In An Elevator – taken from 1989’s Pump – with the help of the masked six-string slinger Sidney Jake, who is yet to reveal his face.

While the ever-energetic Wilcox vocalizes the track's iconic guitar intro lick, Fripp and Jake are on hand to serve up a series of supporting powerchords and high-gain lead licks. Fripp is also, once again, on backing vocal duties, throwing in a handful of customary "woah" and "oh yeahs" for good measure.

The caption of the YouTube video, as teasing as ever, has Wilcox declaring “The kitchen trio return and are living it up as they are going down!”

It's the latest addition to the pair's internet-breaking covers series, which has so far seen them take on a huge array of classic tracks, from Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze and Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast, to the Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane.

Of their oh-so popular program, Fripp recently revealed that the series was originally designed to provide comic relief during the pressures of the pandemic.

"They're all utterly stunning things," Fripp said of the tracks they've covered. "I'm blown away by the original guitarists on these tracks. Phenomenal development and playing primarily since the laye ‘70s and early ‘80s, Van Halen onwards. Steve Vai, Satriani, the Metallica boys… The originators of the riffs are phenomenal players.

“I go back, listen to the original versions on record, see live performances, look at different interpretations and guitar covers on YouTube," he continued. "Then I have to honor the spirit of the music while making it my own.”

If you think Steve Vai’s legendary 10-hour and 30-hour guitar practice regimens were excessive, that amount of time is kid’s stuff compared to the intense training Anthony Garone outlines in the new Failure to Fracture.

The new book chronicles Garone’s 22-year journey to master the electric guitar parts to King Crimson’s Fracture, a song once described by composer Robert Fripp as “impossible to play.”

The 11-minute instrumental, which hails from Crimson’s 1974 opus, Starless and Bible Black, is famous for a section roughly three minutes in where Fripp begins a nonstop barrage of notes called a “moto perpetuo” – an Italian term for “perpetual motion.”

According to Garone, Fripp’s moto perpetuo “requires intense right-hand string-skipping, and picking capabilities only a handful of guitarists around the world possess”.

Garone was a 16-year-old who practiced guitar six or more hours every day when his father challenged him to learn Fracture. He recalls not understanding why he could play other technical pieces of music, but not this one. 

Over the years, Garone published blog posts and videos about his efforts, and kept working at it until he had a breakthrough after enrolling in a week-long guitar instruction course led by Fripp in rural Mexico in 2015.

There, Garone learned the mechanics of Fripp’s right-hand technique, and realized that in order to properly play Fracture he would have to “relearn how to play guitar, sit, stand, and breathe”.

Garone went so far as to retrain himself on the instrument, playing a single open string for two hours a day across several weeks. In 2016, he was finally able to play small pieces of Fracture, and documented his progress on his Make Weird Music YouTube channel in a series called Failure to Fracture.

The new book follows Garone’s long guitar journey, ending with video performances of both Fracture and its “sequel” composition FraKctured.

As for whether he nailed it? 

Well, just ask Fripp himself, who commented in a recent video, “Anthony has spent 22 years failing to play Fracture. Actually, he’s done a pretty good job. Anthony’s failure is so well-achieved in my book, it’s a success.”

Failure to Fracture is released May 18 and is available for preorder here.

Because yesterday was Sunday, King Crimson electric guitar legend Robert Fripp and his wife, artist and singer Toyah Wilcox, unveiled the newest installment of their weekly “Sunday Lunch” series of YouTube cover songs.

But because this was also no ordinary Sunday – rather, it was Easter Sunday – Fripp and Wilcox had something special up their sleeves: a bunny-themed performance of Iron Maiden’s 1982 classic, The Number of the Beast.

Witness Wilcox belt out the tune with Dickinson-ian strength, while wearing rabbit ears and holding a pair of carrots. 

Witness the ever-stoic Fripp rip the song's iconic licks on his Fernades Custom Gold electric guitar. 

Witness tattooed co-guitarist “Sidney Jake” riff along in his, um, black-and-gold devil-gimp getup.

As Wilcox writes in the YouTube caption accompanying the video, “Be afraid - Very Afraid!!!”

Jakko Jakszyk is many things. He has enjoyed a storied career playing with the likes of Kings of Oblivion, The Lodge, Level 42 and more, and as a prolific solo artist. He is also an actor, a comedian, and a documentarian whose work has been broadcast on the BBC. 

Since 2013, he has fronted King Crimson – a band he had been well-placed to join having familiarised himself with their catalogue playing in 21st Century Schizoid Band. But the through line in Jakszyk's portfolio is his sense of curiosity, creativity, and the electric guitar.

Here, Jakszyk goes where the likes of Satriani and Bonamassa have gone before and documents his guitar-buying hits, misses and regrets. 

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? 

“I don’t know whether it’s a serious guitar… I bought a copy of a 345 from Macari’s in Charing Cross Road and I think the brand name was [El] Degas, and although it sounds Spanish I think they were Japanese. I scrubbed off the original name and made a little stencil from a Gibson advert and I put ‘Gibson’ on the top. 

“That was my first kind of proper guitar that I bought with my own money. I was an enormous fan of Robert Fripp and I remember reading that he said he had two main guitars. 

“One was the famous black Les Paul, but the other was a 345 and there are some pictures of him playing the 345 while recording In The Wake of Poseidon. Oh, and Fred Frith had one. I was a big Henry Cow fan, so that’s why I was particularly enamoured of that.” 

What was the most recent guitar you bought and why?

“It was this afternoon! It’s a Gordon Smith Gemini. Apparently it’s immaculate and hasn’t been played, I’m assured. I bought it on eBay so I’m expecting it to arrive next week. I used to have a number of Gordon Smiths. In fact, I had a black one that I loved and I foolishly replaced the Gordon Smith tremolo in the early or mid-80s. 

“It was simple but functional and very good, but I replaced it with a Kahler, which completely fucked the whole sound of it and so I sold it. Apparently Greg Lake bought it.”

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had?

“Do you remember those Record Exchange and Music Exchange shops? There used to be one in Notting Hill Gate and I bought a 20-watt Marshall head from the '60s for £25 and years later I flogged it for about £500. I think it was basically a PA amp – I remember Allan Holdsworth having one. I would say that’s definitely a bargain.”

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying a guitar or any piece of gear?

“That’s a tough one to answer, actually. There have been a few, I think. I had a Les Paul that cost a lot of money and I didn’t like it. I think that might be it. The remorse has been flogging stuff rather than buying stuff, actually. There have been a lot of those…”

Which brings us neatly on to… Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go of? 

“I sold three. I bought a 1951 Gibson ES-175 with a single Alnico bridge pickup and I used it on the first Dizrhythmia record. I loved that guitar, but a tax bill came in and the guitar was the most valuable thing I had. Of course now, in order to buy that same model back, it would be a small fortune. 

“Another is a 1961 white Les Paul/SG. I really regretted selling that; it was a fantastic instrument. Same reason. Tax bill. And here’s one – when I was a kid I would buy any album if Dave Stewart, the keyboard player, was on it and one such album I bought was called Fish Rising by Steve Hillage. 

“On the back cover Steve is standing by a riverbank playing an early '60s SG Junior and I thought, ‘That’s just about the coolest-looking guitar I have ever seen…’ and I bought it off him and I really regret selling it.”

What’s your best guitar-buying tip?

“Oh lordy. You know, the value of anything is all down to how much someone is prepared to pay for it. I’m not a collector, I’m a guitarist that likes guitars. I’ve had a number of 345s, but by far the best one I ever had was an Antoria copy from the '80s, and I gave it back to the shop because it didn’t say Gibson on it.

“So my advice would be do not let that sway you. If it looks great, it feels great and it plays great, who gives a fuck what’s written on it? I’ve regretted selling that ever since and I wished I’d kept hold of it. It was a great instrument.”

When was the last time you stopped to stare in a guitar shop window and what were you looking at? (We’ll extend this to online shopping in view of the current circumstances…)

“The last time I got transfixed by a guitar – that’s kind of the question, right? – was a few summers ago. Crimson were on tour in Europe and we had a long-ish lay-off in Amsterdam. I think we had arrived there one day, had the next day off and then we had two shows. On the day off it was a glorious summer’s day and I was about a 14-minute walk from all the museums: the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and there’s a Banksy [exhibition at Moco] Museum.

“I passed this guitar shop and it was fantastic. Upstairs it had lots of guitars and there was a glass case with a few select guitars in it and it had a guitar I’d never seen in real life, a Gibson ES-150D. When you look at it straight on, it looks like a 335. It’s walnut, it’s got block mother-of-pearl markers and a master volume on the lower horn. When you look at it from the side, it’s the depth of a 175. So it’s like a 175 but in the shape of a 335.

“Next thing I did was phone my guitar tech and said, ‘If I buy a semi-acoustic, have we got room in the big flight case?’ He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’ So I bought it. I took it to the soundcheck and Robert [Fripp] was very enamoured of it, so now I play it on two tunes.”

If you could use only humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career which would you choose and why? 

“Humbuckers. You can’t get the fullness of tone that I like out of a single coil. I like the sound of single coils in context, but I would ultimately miss the humbuckers. Fatter, warmer… for a lead sound it’s more my thing.”

What’s your favourite guitar shop and why?

“I guess it used to be Chandlers in Kew, but it’s not there any more. It was lovely for lots of reasons. I knew most of the people that worked there, they always had an interesting selection of older instruments, as well as new things. Where else is there? It was my guitar shop of choice and now it’s not there and if there is another guitar shop that’s like that I don’t know where it is. Please tell me.”

• Jakko Jakszyk’s latest album, Secrets & Lies, is available now via Inside Out Music.

2020 was head-spinning, world-turned-upside-down weird, and perhaps no musical duo captured and translated that weirdness quite so pointedly as King Crimson electric guitar icon Robert Fripp and his wife Toyah Willcox, with their “Sunday Lunch” series of YouTube cover songs.

And while part of the beauty of the weekly videos – which has seen the previously-believed-to-be-humorless Fripp joining Willcox to tackle everything from Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze to Metallica’s Enter Sandman and, incredibly, Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls – is the fact that they appear without comment or context, Fripp and Willcox recently sat down with Rolling Stone to pull the curtain back a bit on their intentions with the videos. 

“Performers have a responsibility to perform and at this particular time to keep people’s spirits up,” Fripp explained. “This is a very English cultural tradition. Essentially, when things are really bad in England, what you do is begin laughing and do silly things.”

As for the silly things he and Willcox have done, they revealed that, in addition to providing come comic relief in the face of a global pandemic, there's also some cultural commentary at play: Girls, Girls, Girls was a response to the Megan Markle/Royal Family spat that had enveloped the public at the time, as well as “the whole idea that girls are only one thing,” Willcox said, while choices like Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell were used to drive home the fact that according to Fripp and Willcox, age is nothing more than a number.

Fripp cites Enter Sandman as his favorite track of those that the pair have covered, but he has been impressed across the board from a guitar perspective.

“They’re all utterly stunning things,” he said. “I’m blown away by the original guitarists on these tracks. Phenomenal development and playing primarily since the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Van Halen onwards. Steve Vai, Satriani, the Metallica boys… The originators of the riffs are phenomenal players.

“I go back, listen to the original versions on record, see live performances, look at different interpretations and guitar covers on YouTube. Then I have to honor the spirit of the music while making it my own.”

Asked whether he had ever played songs like Smoke on the Water or You Really Got Me before the Sunday Lunch series, Fripp responded he hadn’t.

“Although if we go back to 1965 to 1967, I was a hotel musician in Bournemouth [in the south of England]," he said. "As the young guitarist in the band, the band used to turn to me and say, ‘What twists do you have, Bob?’ in other words, it’s the guitarist’s responsibility to present the band with the latest hits that young people in the audience would want to hear us play.

“Moving forward 50-odd years, nowadays, were I in that position, essentially that of a cover band, you would be expected to know all these tunes – everything from the Eighties forward – and be able to present honorable versions of them. In a sense, that’s what I’m doing today.

“It’s not a giant leap, although for the past 50 years my primary repertoire has been King Crimson, not other bands.”

The year 2020 has been full of surprises, and it’s not done yet. 

With that in mind, may we present, free of context (because what context could there truly be?) King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp… sitting in a prison cell… wearing fake tattoos… and playing Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on a Fernandes Custom Gold electric guitar.

To adds to the bizarreness of the setup, Fripp’s wife of 34 years, musician and actress Toyah Wilcox, stands behind the cell door, dancing and playing the role of Ozzy Osbourne to Fripp’s Tony Iommi.

“Happy Sunday lunch from Toyah and Robert!” Fripp exclaims after the performance.

Happy, indeed.

For more Toyah and Robert madness, check out their covers of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water and David Bowie’s Heroes, a song Fripp knows a thing or two about.

Former King Crimson singer and bass player Gordon Haskell died aged 74 on October 16.

His passing was announced on his official Facebook page, which read, “It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Gordon, a great musician and a wonderful person who will be sadly missed by so many.”

No cause of death has been revealed.

Haskell began his music career as a bassist in the British psychedelic pop-rock band The Fleur De Lys (while living in London, he also reportedly shared a flat with Jimi Hendrix). The group was later hired as a as a full-time session band for Atlantic Records, which led Haskell to work with artists like Isaac Hayes and producers like Glyn Johns and Arif Mardin. He also recorded a solo album, Sail in My Boat, in 1969.

Haskell had also played bass on occasion for his school friend Robert Fripp’s pre-King Crimson teenage band, the League of Gentlemen, and when Greg Lake left Crimson in 1970, Fripp drafted him to fill the slot as bassist and singer. 

He handled lead vocals on Cadence and Cascade, from 1970's In the Wake of Poseidon, and contributed vocals and bass to the follow-up album, Lizard, released that same year.

But creative differences, in particular Haskell’s preference for R&B over the prog-rock at the heart of Crimson’s sound, led to his acrimonious exit from the band in September, 1970.

A tribute post on King Crimson's official Facebook page following Haskell’s death made reference to this fact: "Gordon Haskell's Facebook page is reporting that Gordon has died,” it read. “His time in KC wasn't a particularly happy part of his long career but his work on In the Wake of Poseidon and in particular, Lizard is much admired in the Crimson community."

Haskell later sued Crimson for royalties he believed he was owed from his work on Poseidon and Lizard.

Following his time in Crimson Haskell enjoyed a long solo career. He recorded a dozen studio albums, beginning with It Is and It Isn't, which was released on Atlantic Records in 1971 and featured a guest appearance from future King Crimson bassist John Wetton.

In 2001 he scored an unlikely hit with the single How Wonderful You Are, which reached No. 2 in the UK charts and sold more than 400,000 copies.

His most recent effort was 2020’s The Cat Who’s Got the Cream, which he called the “the best album of my life in every way” in an interview with It's Psychedelic Baby magazine earlier this year.

The common consensus is that Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band. And maybe they were. But that doesn’t mean they wrote the first heavy song. 

Because while Ozzy and co. certainly took the concept of intense, sinister music played by evil-looking dudes to new sonic and visual heights, there were plenty of unnerving sounds designed to scare the bejesus out of listeners being created well before Tony Iommi’s deathly Black Sabbath tritone riff signaled the end (or the beginning?) of the musical world as we know it.

So lean back, strap in and take a trip back to the prehistoric age (the mid to late 1960s, for the most part) as Guitar World unearths some pre-Sab heavy metal thunder (and yes, that tune is on the list) with the 20 heaviest songs before Black Sabbath.

1. The Troggs - Wild Thing (1966)

Wild Thing was originally recorded in 1965 in a folky vein by American act The Wild Ones, but in British band The Troggs’ hands the following year it turned into a proto-garage-punk rave-up with a bashing, three-chord motif, hyper-sexualized vocal and, um, ocarina solo. 

This version became the template going forward, from Jimi Hendrix’s fiery (literally, he set his Strat ablaze at the climax) feedback-laced performance of the song at the Monterey Pop Festival in ’68, to The Runaways’ and X’s punky takes, to Bruce Springsteen’s stomping, arena-shaking live renditions. 

The song is so bulletproof, and the riff so undeniable, that even comedian Sam Kinison’s raunchy hair-metal mock-up couldn’t ruin it - not entirely, at least.

2. The Beatles - Helter Skelter (1968)

As the legend goes, Paul McCartney was inspired to write Helter Skelter after reading an interview with Pete Townshend in which The Who guitarist called his own band’s I Can See for Miles the “dirtiest, filthiest” song they’d ever recorded. 

Paul managed not only to out-dirty Pete on this one, but also to anticipate and inspire decades of heaviness to come in the song’s distorted, dissonant guitars, thudding bass and shredded vocals. 

It’s become a go-to for evil dudes ever since, from Mötley Crüe to Rob Zombie to Marilyn Manson (and, of course, Manson’s namesake, Charles). What’s more, The Beatles’ alternate Second Version / Take 17 recording, unearthed for the 50th anniversary White Album release, is an even wilder ride. As Paul says on the track, “Keep that one. Mark it ‘fab.’ ” You’d best listen to what the man says.

3. Led Zeppelin - Communication Breakdown (1969)

Let’s be honest: Any number of tunes - Whole Lotta Love, Dazed and Confused - could occupy the Zep spot on this list. But for sheer bone-crushing intensity, we’re going to give it to Communication Breakdown, whose machine-gunning stun riff not only served as something of a template for a zillion speed metal bands to come, but also sounds a whole lot like the one Sabbath fashioned for Paranoid a year later. 

Furthermore, while Zep weren’t the only late-Sixties act pushing blues into a heavier realm, with this tune they just did it better - and, not insignificantly, faster - than their contemporaries.

4. MC5 - Kick Out The Jams (1969)

Really, Rob Tyner’s opening salvo to “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” would be enough to land this proto-punk anthem a spot on the list. It doesn’t hurt that what follows is no Tiptoe Through the Tulips. 

Rather, it’s two and a half minutes of the most raucous and rip-snorting riffage and electric-shock soloing - courtesy of Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith - ever put to tape. As for that expletive, it managed to get the album (recorded live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom) both censored and pulled from shelves. And, really, what’s more metal than that?

5. Steppenwolf - Born To Be Wild (1968)

It wasn’t the first-ever use of the words “heavy metal,” but for most music fans, this is where the term was born. Plus, singer John Kay follows it up with the word “thunder,” which only makes it even more badass. 

That said, the title refrain is pretty metal in and of itself, and even though Steppenwolf were never that “heavy,” per se, this tune brought it all together with a chugging low-E string riff, raspy vocal and shout-it-out-loud chorus that presaged the sort of road-dog rockers that bands like Judas Priest and Motörhead would ride to glory years later.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Child (Slight Return) (1968)

Voodoo Child opens with a nimble, wah-wah-ed guitar line that is swiftly firebombed by Jimi’s massive, earthshaking riffs and howling leads, which seem to rain down from the heavens and leave nothing but a smoldering wasteland in their wake. 

The sheer sonic force of the song is overwhelming, and an early demonstration of just how far out a rock artist could take the blues - which, in a sense, and a much different way, is what Black Sabbath also set out to do in their early days.

7. The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog (1969)

Even today, more than a half-century after it was first released, I Wanna Be Your Dog sounds impossibly tough, dirty and downright dangerous. 

From the dark, descending chord progression to the buzz-saw guitar of Ron Asheton (who, along with his brother and drummer, Scott, were once referred to by head Stooge Iggy Pop as “the laziest, delinquent sorts of pig slobs ever born”), the song is one big drone-y, dirge-y death-rumble and perfectly encapsulates Iggy’s demented take on the blues. 

And the lecherous lyrics, one-note piano trill and, err, sleigh bells only add to the perverse proceedings.

8. Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is commonly regarded with a smirk, but as most any metal band worth its long hair, leather and pointy guitars can tell you, people often mock what they don’t understand. 

Forget that it’s an unnecessary 17 minutes in length. Forget that the title is a drunken interpretation of In the Garden of Eden. Forget, even, that the band playing it is named Iron Butterfly. The song absolutely crushes, and the combined guitar-and-organ riff is as dark, menacing and downright groovy as anything laid down by Deep Purple, Uriah Heep or any other keys-drenched heavy act. Don’t believe us? Then ask Slayer, who contributed a ripping take to the soundtrack to 1987’s Less Than Zero.

9. Deep Purple - Mandrake Root (1968)

The first part of this early Deep Purple epic is pleasantly heavy enough, at least in that standard late-Sixties British blues-rock way. But Mandrake Root really gets going in the middle instrumental section, where drummer Ian Paice and bassist Nick Simper whip the tempo into a frenzy and lay the groundwork for Ritchie Blackmore to finish out the proceedings with some full-on psych-metal licks, growls and howls, as well as throw in a bit of neoclassical flair for good measure. 

How heavy was it? Heavy enough to be one of the very few early Purple cuts to be performed by the classic Seventies-era MkII lineup. And those versions, if you care to dig one up on YouTube, are a beautiful, instrument-abusing sight to behold.

10. The Pretty Things - Old Man Going (1968)

The first 40 seconds of acoustic strumming in Old Man Going basically sounds like Pinball Wizard before Pinball Wizard (and indeed, the concept album from which it hails, S.F. Sorrow, has been credited as an influence on The Who’s Tommy, even if The Who have disagreed). 

But after that, Old Man Going blooms with proto-Sabbathian beauty, most notably in Dick Taylor’s doomy power chord riffing and most, most notably in Phil May’s vocal, which, upon the song’s release in 1968, any listener would have quickly deemed incredibly Ozzy-like - save for the fact that Ozzy, at least as we know him, didn’t actually exist yet.

11. The Kinks - You Really Got Me (1964)

The two-note power-chord riff alone would have been enough to inspire legions of heavy rockers to come. But the minute Dave Davies took a razor to the speaker cone to his Elpico amp, all bets were off. 

From then on, it’s arguable whether a power chord played without at least some dirt applied to its tone was really much of a power chord at all. In this respect, You Really Got Me is where heavy metal begins - a belief that is clearly shared by Davies, who wrote in a recent Facebook screed about his band being left out of the Met’s Play It Loud guitar exhibit, “I invented heavy power chord distorted LOUD guitar on records like You Really Got Me.” We agree, Dave, we agree!

12. Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell on You (1956)

Far be it for Guitar World to champion a song that doesn’t have much guitar in it - and, what’s more, to champion it for its heaviness. But I Put a Spell on You is a special, scary thing indeed, with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ grunts, growls and, at times, guffaws, still capable of making grown men shake in their boots - so just imagine what hearing it in 1956 would have felt like. 

That Hawkins eventually started performing the song by rising out of a coffin and surrounding himself with snakes, smoke and skulls, while wearing a tusk through his nose, only adds to the shock-rock splendor of it all.

13. Blue Cheers - Summertime Blues (1968)

Numerous high-profile acts, from the Beach Boys to The Who to Rush, have tried their hand at Eddie Cochran’s teenage angst classic, Summertime Blues. But none of them, Cochran included, laid waste to the tune like San Francisco heshers Blue Cheer. 

Guitarist Leigh Stephens plows through the riff with the trashiest tone known to man or beast, while Paul Whaley beats his drums into submission and frontman/bassist Dickie Peterson howls the lyrics with heavy-lidded agitation. Stephens’ squiggly guitar fills and mid-song solo (if, in fact, his freak-fuzz emissions can be labeled such) are a thing of filthy, acid-damaged beauty.

14. Bitter Creek - Plastic Thunder (1967)

Not much is known about Bitter Creek beyond the fact that they existed in the late Sixties, may - that’s right, may - have hailed from Atlanta and contributed this awesome track to a compilation called Psychedelic States: Georgia in the 60s.

Several years ago a fan uploaded Plastic Thunder to YouTube with the title The First Heavy Metal Song Ever Made, and while some people on this list might disagree (we’re lookin’ at you, Dave Davies!), the tune is undeniably heavy, propelled by busily thudding drums and rumbling bass, and topped with crushing chords and sinewy, saturated lead lines. Plus, the repeated chanted outro of “thunduh!” inspired AC/DC decades later on their own “Thunderstruck.” Well, not really… but maybe?

15. Pink Floyd - The Nile Song (1969)

You could always expect the unexpected from Pink Floyd, but The Nile Song was pretty unusual even for them. Dropped into the film soundtrack More, their first recording following Syd Barrett’s exit, the song trades arty psychedelia for compact, riff-centric hard rock, with David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason in full-on power-trio mode, no keyboards necessary (sorry, Richard Wright). 

The band keeps the intensity at a high by continually modulating the key upwards, with Gilmour finally taking the reins for an explosive song-ending solo. This one was later tackled by, among others, the Melvins and Voivod, both of which make perfect sense.

16. Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground) (1927)

Sure, it consists of nothing more than acoustic guitar and voice, but this is one of the heaviest, most intense tunes ever put to tape. Johnson plays a recurring motif in open-D tuning, his piercing slide guitar lines matched by his severe moaning and humming.

The powerful, wordless vocalizations are commonly believed to be his attempt to convey the anguish of Christ before his crucifixion, while Jack White once told Guitar World that Johnson’s playing is “the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded.” Plus, he supposedly did it using a knife for a bottleneck.

17. Cromagnon - Caledonia (1969)

A pre-industrial, proto-black metal curio, Caledonia combines doomy guitars, freak-out soundscapes and bagpipes (?) into something so undeniably whacked out, trashy and evil sounding it could have come from Scandinavia in the 1980s… but was actually recorded in New York City in the late Sixties. 

So raw and unformed it feels as old as the period from which the experimental band took its name as much as it does a transmission from some futuristic - and frickin’ scary - land.

18. Cream - Sunshine Of Your Love (1967)

Jack Bruce Reportedly was inspired to write Sunshine of Your Love after attending a Jimi Hendrix concert (and indeed, Hendrix later covered the song) but Cream’s spin on heavy blues rock here was all their own. 

From Ginger Baker’s toms-heavy, tumbling drums to Eric Clapton’s chewy, saturated guitar (check out that woman tone) to Bruce’s almost operatic vocal approach, it’s like proto-doom and -stoner metal, albeit wrapped up in a decidedly statelier package. Whatever the case, it’s undoubtedly some of the darkest sunshine we’ve ever experienced.

19. The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown - Fire (1968)

There’s no guitar - or even bass - on Fire, but damn if the song isn’t a full-on five-alarm rager. From Arthur Brown’s opening declaration, “I am the god of hellfire,” to the pulsing organ and bleating brass, the song is a bad acid trip (or maybe a great acid trip?) come to life. 

Extra points for Pete Townshend’s production, which includes the sound of a wind from hell in the final seconds, and, of course, Brown’s donning of a burning helmet during live performances.

20. King Crimson - 21st Century Schizoid Man (1969)

The first song on King Crimson’s first album is monolithic in every sense - epic in length and scope, built on a lumbering, ominous guitar riff (doubled by, of all things, alto saxophone) and specked with all manner of end-of-days imagery, from iron claws and funeral pyres to death seeds and napalm fires. 

What’s more, the completely bonkers middle section, Mirrors, is the sound of prog-metal being birthed. The actual 21st century may have still been a ways away, but with Schizoid Man, King Crimson were offering us mere mortals a glimpse of music’s future - and it was undeniably heavy.

Well, bub, no matter how good the song is, it eventually has to end.

The question, then, is: How’s it going to end? A studio fade giving the illusion of a sing-along chorus going on forever in some imaginary world populated by elves? A repeated turnaround? An abrupt, punk-rock-style halt? An unsuspected, off-key chord?

It’s possible, of course, that the end could wind up being a transcendent moment in itself.

Such is the case with the 10 gems below.

10. “Frankenstein,” Edgar Winter

It’s not so much the virtuosity of the synchronized synth and guitar arpeggios that got this one on the list but, rather, the fact it lends itself well to puns about monsters and rock ’n’ roll. (We won’t bother getting started.) It then dawns on us how language and wordplay makes us human. Mighty profound for an instrumental.

09. “Roll with the Changes,” REO Speedwagon

The chorus is repeated so many times toward the end of the song that it becomes a mantra of sorts, meant to hammer home the Zen philosophy expressed in the title of this stadium anthem by an immensely popular band from the Eighties. Thankfully, Gary Richrath’s string bending and tremolo picking bring the listener back from the arena-rock astral plane into the real world.

08. “Let's Go Crazy,” Prince

The Purp goes crazy as this ultimate party tune winds down, showing off his wah-wah-laced Hendrixisms. Judging by the ecstatic state of his solo, he doesn’t want the party to die. But the realization finally hits home that the party must end. Then what? The giant comedown known as Under the Cherry Moon.

07. “21st Century Schizoid Man,” King Crimson

The end homes in on the most addictive part of the riff—Robert Fripp’s chromatic power-chord progression—and accelerates until it becomes a blur of tones, symbolic, perhaps, of human addiction patterns, obsessive behavior, and mental illness. I mean, can you down a bag of potato chips once it’s open? That’s what this riff is like. Do the research.

06. “Shy Boy,” David Lee Roth

Vai, Sheehan. Sheehan, Vai. When David Lee Roth combined the talents of these two stringmen, he unleashed the shred equivalent of a nuclear fission reaction. The furious four-handed tapping makes one realize the importance of science to our daily lives.

05. “Paradise City,” Guns N’ Roses

Rarely has an ending been so uncanny. Axl F. Rose’s repeated pleas for someone to take him home express a young man’s basic yearning for stability and warmth. Slash just wants to play faster and faster. This conflict foreshadows what would for the band grow into an appetite for self-destruction.

04. “Metal Head,” Blotto

This obscure group, in a parody of ’80s heavy metal, takes the ever-loving piss out of the drawn-out rock ’n’ roll ending by practically turning it into its own movement. Obviously, they espouse the philosophy that life is a joke. Blue Oyster Cult’s Buck Dharma vouches for Blotto, though, by playing lead guitar on the track.

03. “Hot for Teacher,” Van Halen

Eddie uses his space-age finger slides and tremolo picking to sound like a laser weapon battle from a late-Seventies sci-fi flick, while brother Alex runs in place on his double bass pedals and David Lee Roth howls till his heart’s content. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out what pubescent fantasy an ending of this magnitude symbolizes. Orgasm. Oh, my gawd.

02. “Highway to Hell,” AC/DC

Whether or not this song is truly about Hell doesn’t matter. How the Young brothers wind it out—furiously strumming their chords, whittling away at the pentatonic scale, and battering up against Bon Scott’s wails—evokes a descent into an underworld of Wagnerian proportions.

01. “Won't Get Fooled Again,” The Who

The tension of the synth interlude and the subsequent release—by way of Pete Townshend’s gargantuan power chords and Roger Daltrey’s vocal-chord-shredding scream—at the time encapsulated what we now refer to as “going postal.”

Today, Robert Fripp—the intellectual and creative powerhouse behind King Crimson—turns 72. Hearing of his birthday led me down one of those YouTube rabbit holes that starts with one video, and ends almost an hour later, with you forgetting why you were on YouTube in the first place (just don't tell my boss.) Anywho, one of the videos I found was this endlessly fascinating clip of King Crimson playing "Elephant Talk" on the short-lived ABC late-night comedy show, Fridays, in 1981.

Between bassist Tony Levin's monster riffs on the Chapman Stick, plus Adrian Belew's (very) David Byrne-influenced vocals and his use of pedals to mimic elephant sounds, there's a lot to unpack here. However, it's Fripp's quiet presence that stands out the most.

Seated at stage left, he barely breaks a sweat (and even cracks a smile!) while showcasing his astonishing chops, which were on full display in that period of the band's history.

"Elephant Talk" was the opening cut on 1981's Discipline, a comeback LP that showed the prog-rock icons moving in a dramatically different direction, toward a dazzling, dizzyingly technical variation of the new wave sounds that were then in vogue.

Enjoy!

Your work is a through-line for some of my favorite music: Frank Zappa to David Bowie to Talking Heads to King Crimson. Apart from good taste in guitarists, what would you say those artists had in common? —Jeff Niemczura

They’re innovators, and so are people like Paul Simon and Nine Inch Nails. So many of the people that have been drawn to me—and who’ve had me work with them—are the kind of artists I’d naturally love, because that’s the kind of music I’m drawn to. I think what we have in common, and I’ll include myself in this since I’ve worked with all these people, is that we’re trying to take music and move it forward and not just stay in one place with it. Every one of those artists you mentioned has their own unique way of approaching music, and I just happen to be one of those people who has enough flexibility that I can fit into any of those packages.

How did Gizmodrome come together, and how would you describe its sound? —Damien Linotte

The last couple of summers, I’ve been in contact with a keyboard player named Vittorio Cosma and a producer named Claudio Dentes about a project in Milan with Stewart Copeland [of the Police]. Eventually I found out Stewart and Vittorio had been doing this for about 10 summers, just getting together, finding a reason to play—just so they could hang out in Italy and eat pasta. By the time I could do it, it had changed to something a little more organized; they’d been offered a record deal from Germany. Without letting me know they were hoping I would join a band with them, they got me to come over.

I thought I was gonna play on four tracks—you know, come in, be in the control room and add guitar. But when I got there, I realized, nope, this is something else. We were set up in a large studio, we could see each other, hear each other, talk to each other, and we started right in doing basic tracks. I was having fun, and I loved the people in the band, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. It took about two or three days before I realized, Hey, this is really good. So that’s how I fell into it.

I wasn’t thinking I’d be in another band; I’ve got the Power Trio, which I’ve had for 11 years. But this was something different. How would I describe the sound? I couldn’t possibly do that, but it’s funky, it’s groovy, it’s happy, it’s joyful, it’s played by guys who know how to play. [laughs] I think it’s a feel-good kind of record.

I read an interview with you years ago where you discussed a new tuning. It was right around Twang Bar King [1983] and Three of a Perfect Pair [King Crimson, 1984]. Robert Fripp had started using his new standard tuning, but you were doing something else, a simple alteration. What was it? —Keith McCrea

In the Eighties, I used altered tunings a lot, and Robert used standard tuning. So, even on records like “Heartbeat” or something like that, you can play it in standard tuning but it’s different. I always would change maybe one or two strings, so it wouldn’t be a very radical change. Then I came up with a very radical tuning I used on a Dobro for many years, and I wrote a record called Desire Caught by the Tail [1986], which was done with that tuning. But by the end of the Eighties, I had decided it was too cumbersome to have so many tunings, especially if you were gonna play those songs live.

King Crimson stopped for a number of years, and in that period, I switched back to standard tuning and Robert made up his “new standard” tuning. So, when we came back together in the Nineties, our roles had kind of reversed. I never did use Robert’s tuning. I tried it once and, well, tunings are relevant to the player. If they ring a note for you and you find some chord shapes, away you go. I couldn’t do that with that tuning. It’s not meant for me.

Have you ever used Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies in the studio? —Bjorn Lakenstrazen

The only time I actually used them is when we were making [David Bowie’s 1979 album] Lodger. We used them in the studio then. I thought they were kind of fun. You’d draw a card, and it says, “Think green.” Okay, I’m gonna try to think green now. I don’t know how seriously they were supposed to be taken, but we kind of more or less giggled at them. [laughs]

Can you describe your audition for Frank Zappa? I hear it’s kind of a funny story. —Tommy Moore

I flew out to Frank’s house—my first time on a plane. That’s how green I was. They picked me up and took me to his house in the basement, which would turn into his studio over the years. It was just a big empty room. Frank’s sitting behind a console, he’s got a cigarette in his mouth, of course, and there’s a microphone in the middle of the room. Unfortunately, there were people moving things all over; here goes a piano in front of you, they’re setting up something over there and so on. It was very distracting. Frank gave me a long list of songs. I had to borrow the albums from friends because I was so poor.

We started, and he’d say, “Okay, let’s try ‘Andy,’ ” and I’d play it for a minute or two and sing some things, and then he’d stop me, take another puff and say, “Okay, try ‘Wind Up Workin’ in a Gas Station.’ I was fumbling and really being distracted by all the stuff going on. I had nowhere to go, so they were gonna take me back to the airport and fly me back home, so I just watched everyone else’s terrifying auditions. I watched keyboard players and percussionists and thought, “Oh my god, these guys are so great, I don’t know how I’ll ever be in this band.”

There was a moment at the end of the day, though, where it was just Frank and I standing there, and I said, “I’m sorry, I really thought I could do this, and I thought it would be different.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I thought it would just be you and me somewhere quiet where I could show you that I could do this.” So we went up to his living room and sat on his purple couch, I took my little Pignose amp and stuffed it between the pillows so I could turn it up as loud as I could, and we started over. We got about a third of the way through and Frank was starting to sing along with me. Finally he put his hand out, shook my hand and said, “You’ve got the job.” Changed my life, that handshake did.

You started out as a drummer. Does that affect how you play guitar? —Louis-Jules Trochu

Absolutely. I don’t think, for example, I would’ve done that well with Frank [Zappa]’s music had I not had such a rhythmic background. It’s very natural to me. I’ve always been able to play in an odd time signature and shake my booty in 4/4 at the same time and make it groovy, because it’s all a matter of accenting anyway. I also think my time with Frank and my time as a drummer—and I still play drums on my solo records—was important to my being able to write the kind of material I’ve written with King Crimson. Frank was a drummer first too, by the way.

What really led to the end of your involvement with King Crimson? —Ken Brown

Simple! Robert just pulled the plug. [laughs] We had done 10 shows as a five-piece band with new drummer Gavin Harrison along with Pat Mastelotto, and I thought we were gonna continue on from there, and at the end of those 10 shows, Robert seemed to be game for that as well. But within a few weeks, it was over. He said, “I’m not gonna play anymore,” and that was that. When he put together the current lineup, he had something totally different in mind, and he told me it wouldn’t be right for me and I wouldn’t be right for it.

I love your Flux by Belew app. Is there a chance you’ll expand upon any of its musical pieces and make extended versions—or will there just be more Flux in general? —Jim McCurdy

Both, yes. Right now, however, time is not on my side because not only am I getting ready for Gizmodrome, but I’m also being asked to do more Celebrating David Bowie shows next year. But any time I have on my own, I dedicate to Flux. I’m always recording things that can be used as snippets, whether I record them on my iPhone or in the studio. I probably have around 18 songs that I haven’t had time to record. But the idea always was not just new material but taking that material and refashioning it. My thought about music is, how come you do a song and that’s the only life it ever has? That’s it? One arrangement, one version? I think that’s cheating your song. I think what you should do, then, is go back, take another look at it, change it, maybe even change some words, change the style, whatever.

There are songs on Flux that are short because that’s kind of the nature of Flux, but I could see taking them and making them longer arrangements. I have an idea in mind that at some point, I’m going to make a record of the songs from Flux. My first solo vinyl record would be songs from Flux, and it would be full-length songs, more like the Gizmodrome record.

What was your involvement in your signature Parker Maxx Fly guitar? —Craig Jones

When I came into the picture, I was using Strats, but they were modified with Roland GK 13-pin MIDI pickups and Sustainiacs. I asked Ken Parker if there was a way we could put those things in a Parker. He told me that when they first put out the Parker Fly, it was designed to be a MIDI guitar, but they left that out because he was afraid it was too revolutionary. When I approached him, I think he felt, This is the time to do it. I helped them upgrade the electronics. I mean, the guitar was designed in the Eighties, and we’re talking about 10 or 15 years later, so I said, let’s put in the MIDI, keep the piezo, make it so you can get a million sounds. Line 6 had just developed the technology for the Variax, so we said, “Let’s put that in there.” I can’t take any credit, though; I just kind of gave them the problems to solve and they did it.